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No Hero 




No Hero 

/ ,»/ 

By B’ W. Hornung 


Charles Scribner’s Sons 
New York 190 ? 




C » 


THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

APR 9 1903 



Entry 


XXo. No. 




Copyright, 1903, by 
Charles Scribner’s Sons 

Published, April, 1903 




CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

I. A Plenipotentiary 1 

II. The Theatre of War 29 

III. First Blood 45 

IV. A Little Knowledge 60 

V. A Marked Woman 75 

VI. Out of Action 86 

VII. Second Fiddle 96 

VIII. Prayers and Parables 109 

IX. Sub Judice 128 

X. The Last Word 142 

XI. The Lion’s Mouth 161 

XII. A Stern Chase 179 

XIII. Number Three 199 


No Hero 


CHAPTER I 

A PLENIPOTENTIARY 

Has no writer ever dealt with the dra- 
matic aspect of the unopened envelope? I 
cannot recall such a passage in any of my au- 
thors, and yet to my mind there is much mat- 
ter for philosophy in what is always the ex- 
pressionless shell of a boundless possibility. 
Your friend may run after you in the street, 
and you know at a glance whether his news is 
to be good, bad, or indifferent; but in his 
handwriting on the breakfast-table there is 
never a hint as to the nature of his communi- 
cation. Whether he has sustained a loss or 
an addition to his family, whether he wants 
you to dine with him at the club or to lend 
him ten pounds, his handwriting at least will 
be the same, unless, indeed, he be offended, 


i 


No Hero 


when he will generally indite your name with 
a studious precision and a distant grace quite 
foreign to his ordinary caligraphy. 

These reflections, trite enough as I know, 
are nevertheless inevitable if one is to begin 
one’s unheroic story in the modern manner, 
at the latest possible point. That is clearly the 
point at which a waiter brought me the fatal 
letter from Catherine Evers. Apart even from 
its immediate consequences, the letter had a 
prima facie interest, of no ordinary kind, as 
the first for years from a once constant corre- 
spondent. And so I sat studying the envelope 
with a curiosity too piquant not to be enjoyed. 
What in the world could so obsolete a friend 
find to say to one now? Six months earlier 
there had been a certain opportunity for an 
advance, which at that time could not pos- 
sibly have been misconstrued; when they 
landed me, a few later, there was another 
and perhaps a better one. But this was the 
last summer of the late century, and already 
I was beginning to get about like a lamp- 
lighter on my two sticks. Now, young men 
about town, on two walking-sticks, in the 


2 


A Plenipotentiary 

year of grace 1900, meant only one thing. 
Quite a stimulating thing in the beginning, 
but even as I write, in this the next winter 
but one, a national irritation of which the 
name alone might prevent you from reading 
another word. 

Catherine’s handwriting, on the contrary, 
was still stimulating, if indeed I ever found it 
more so in the foolish past. It had not altered 
in the least. There was the same sweet ped- 
antry of the Attic e, the same superiority to 
the most venial abbreviation, the same incon- 
sistent forest of exclamatory notes, thick as 
poplars across the channel. The present plan- 
tation started after my own Christian name, 
to wit “Dear Duncan ! !” Yet there was noth- 
ing Germanic in Catherine’s ancestry; it was 
only her apologetic little way of addressing 
me as though nothing had ever happened, of 
asking whether she might. Her own old tact 
and charm were in that tentative burial of the 
past. In the first line she had all but won 
my entire forgiveness; but the very next in- 
terfered with the effect. 

“You promised to do anything for me!” 

3 


No Hero 


I should be sorry to deny it, I am sure, 
for not to this day do I know what I did say 
on the occasion to which she evidently re- 
ferred. But was it kind to break the silence 
of years with such a reference? Was it even 
quite decent in Catherine to ignore my ex- 
istence until I could be of use to her, and then 
to ask the favour in her first breath? It was 
true, as she went on to remind me, that we 
were more or less connected after all, and at 
least conceivable that no one else could help 
her as I could, if I would. In any case, it 
was a certain satisfaction to hear that Cath- 
erine herself was of the last opinion. I read 
on. She was in a difficulty; but she did not 
say what the difficulty was. For one un- 
worthy moment the thought of money entered 
my mind, to be ejected the next, as the Cath- 
erine of old came more and more into the 
mental focus. Pride was the last thing in 
which I had found her wanting, and her letter 
indicated no change in that respect. 

“You may wonder,” she wrote just at the 
end, “why I have never sent you a single word 
of inquiry, or sympathy, or congratulation!! 

4 


A Plenipotentiary 

Well — suppose it was ‘bad blood’!! between 
us when you went away ! Mind, I never meant 
it to be so, but suppose it was : could I treat 
the dear old you like that, and the Great New 
You like somebody else? You have your own 
fame to thank for my unkindness ! I am only 
thankful they haven’t given you the V. C. ! ! 
Then I should never have dared — not even 
now ! ! r 

I smoked a cigarette when I had read it 
all twice over, and as I crushed the fire out 
of the stump I felt I could as soon think of 
lighting it again as I should have expected 
Catherine Evers to set a fresh match to me. 
That, I was resolved, she should never do; 
nor was I quite coxcomb enough to suspect 
her of the desire for a moment. But a man 
who has once made a fool of himself, espe- 
cially about a woman somewhat older than 
himself, does not soon get over the soreness ; 
and mine returned with the very fascination 
which made itself felt even in the shortest 
little letter. 

Catherine wrote from the old address in 
Elm Park Gardens, and she wanted me to call 
5 


No Hero 


as early as I could, or to make any appoint- 
ment I liked. I therefore telegraphed that I 
was coming at three o’clock that afternoon, 
and thus made for myself one of the longest 
mornings that I can remember spending in 
town. I was staying at the time at the Ken- 
sington Palace Hotel, to be out of the central 
racket of things, and yet more or less under 
the eye of the surgeon who still hoped to ex- 
tract the last bullet in time. I can remember 
spending half the morning gazing aimlessly 
over the grand old trees, already prematurely 
bronzed, and the other half in limping in their 
shadow to the Round Pond, where a few little 
townridden boys were sailing their humble 
craft. It was near the middle of August, and 
for the first time I was thankful that an earlier 
migration had not been feasible in my case. 

In spite of my telegram Mrs. Evers was not 
at home when I arrived, but she had left a mes- 
sage which more than explained matters. She 
was lunching out, but only in Brechin Place, 
and I was to wait in the study if I did not 
mind. I did not, and yet I did, for the room 
in which Catherine certainly read her books 
6 


A Plenipotentiary 

and wrote her letters was also the scene of 
that which I was beginning to find it rather 
hard work to forget as it was. Nor had it 
changed any more than her handwriting, or 
than the woman herself as I confidently ex- 
pected to find her now. I have often thought 
that at about forty both sexes stand still to 
the eye, and I did not expect Catherine Evers, 
who could barely have reached that rubicon, 
to show much symptom of the later marches. 
To me, here in her den, the other year was 
just the other day. My time in India was 
little better than a dream to me, while as for 
angry shots at either end of Africa, it was 
never I who had been there to hear them. I 
must have come by my sticks in some less 
romantic fashion. Nothing could convince me 
that I had ever been many days or miles away 
from a room that I knew by heart, and found 
full as I left it of familiar trifles and poignant 
associations. 

That was the shelf devoted to her poets; 
there was no addition that I could see. Over 
it hung the fine photograph of Watts’s 
“Hope,” an ironic emblem, and elsewhere one 
7 


No Hero 


of that intolerably sad picture, his “Paolo 
and Francesca”: how I remembered the wet 
Sunday when Catherine took me to see the 
original in Melbury Road! The old piano 
which was never touched, the one which had 
been in St. Helena with Napoleon’s doctor, 
there it stood to an inch where it had stood 
of old, a sort of grand-stand for the photo- 
graphs of Catherine’s friends. I descried my 
own young effigy among the rest, in a frame 
which I recollected giving her at the time. 
Well, I looked all the idiot I must have been ; 
and there was the very Persian rug that I had 
knelt on in my idiocy ! I could afford to smile 
at myself to-day ; yet now it all seemed yester- 
day, not even the day before, until of a sudden 
I caught sight of that other photograph in the 
place of honour on the mantelpiece. It was 
one by Hills and Sanders, of a tall youth in 
flannels, armed with a long-handled racket, 
and the sweet open countenance which Robin 
Evers had worn from his cradle upward. I 
should have known him anywhere and at any 
age. It was the same dear, honest face; but 
to think that this giant was little Bob! He 
8 


A Plenipotentiary 

had not gone to Eton when I saw him last; 
now I knew from the sporting papers that he 
was up at Cambridge; but it was left to his 
photograph to bring home the flight of 
time. 

Certainly his mother would never have done 
so when all at once the door opened and she 
stood before me, looking about thirty in the 
ample shadow of a cavalier’s hat. Simply but 
admirably gowned, as I knew she would be, 
her slender figure looked more youthful still; 
yet in all this there was no intent; the dry 
cool smile was that of an older woman, and 
I was prepared for greater cordiality than I 
could honestly detect in the greeting of the 
small firm hand. But it was kind, as indeed 
her whole reception of me was ; only it had 
always been the way of Catherine the cor- 
respondent to make one expect a little more 
than mere kindness, and of Catherine the com- 
panion to disappoint that expectation. Her 
conversation needed few exclamatory points. 

“Still halt and lame,” she murmured over 
my sticks. “You poor thing, you are to sit 
down this instant.” 


9 


No Hero 


And I obeyed her as one always had, merely 
remarking that I was getting along famously 
now. 

“You must have had an awful time/’ con- 
tinued Catherine, seating herself near me, her 
calm wise eyes on mine. 

“Blood-poisoning,” said I. “It nearly 
knocked me out, but I’m glad to say it didn’t 
quite.” 

Indeed, I had never felt quite so glad be- 
fore. 

“Ah! that was too hard and cruel; but I 
was thinking of the day itself,” explained 
Catherine, and paused in some sweet trans- 
parent awe of one who had been through it. 

“It was a beastly day,” said I, forgetting 
her objection to the epithet until it was out. 
But Catherine did not wince. Her fixed eyes 
were full of thought. 

“It was all that here,” she said. “One de- 
pressing morning I had a telegram from Bob, 
‘Spion Kop taken’ ” 

“So Bob,” I nodded, “had it as badly as 
everybody else!” 

“Worse,” declared Catherine, her eye hard- 
io 


A Plenipotentiary 

ening; “it was all I could do to keep him at 
Cambridge, though he had only just gone up. 
He would have given up everything and 
flown to the Front if I had let him. ,, 

And she wore the inexorable face with 
which I could picture her standing in his way; 
and in Catherine I could admire that dogged 
look and all it spelt, because a great passion 
is always admirable. The passion of Cath- 
erine’s life was her boy, the only son of his 
mother, and she a widow. It had been so 
when he was quite small, as I remembered it 
with a pinch of jealousy startling as a twinge 
from an old wound. More than ever must it 
be so now; that was as natural as the ma- 
ternal embargo in which Catherine seemed 
almost to glory. And yet, I reflected, if all 
the widows had thought only of their only 
sons — and of themselves! 

“The next depressing morning,” continued 
Catherine, happily oblivious of what was pass- 
ing through one’s mind, “the first thing I saw, 
the first time I put my nose outside, was a 
great pink placard with ‘Spion Kop Aban- 
doned !’ Duncan, it was too awful.” 


ii 


No Hero 

“I wish we’d sat tight,” I said, “I must con- 
fess.” 

“Tight !” cried Catherine in dry horror. “I 
should have abandoned it long before. I 
should have run away — hard! To think 
that you didn’t — that’s quite enough for 

1LL __ jf 

me. 

And again I sustained the full flattery of that 
speechless awe which was yet unembarrass- 
ing by reason of its freedom from undue 
solemnity. 

“There were some of us who hadn’t a leg 
to run on,” I had to say; “I was one, Mrs. 
Evers.” 

“I beg your pardon?” 

“Catherine, then.” But it put me to the 
blush. 

“Thank you. If you really wish me to call 
you ‘Captain Clephane’ you have only to say 
so; but in that case I can’t ask the favour I 
had made up my mind to ask — of so old a 
friend.” 

Her most winning voice was as good a 
servant as ever; the touch of scorn in it was 
enough to stimulate, but not to sting; and it 


12 


A Plenipotentiary 

was the same with the sudden light in the 
steady intellectual eyes. 

“Catherine,” I said, “you can’t indeed ask 
any favour of me ! There you are quite right. 
It is not a word to use between us.” 

Mrs. Evers gave me one of her deliberate 
looks before replying. 

“And I am not so sure that it is a favour,” 
she said softly enough at last. “It is really 
your advice I want to ask, in the first place 
at all events. Duncan, it’s about old Bob !” 

The corners of her mouth twitched, her 
eyes filled with a quaint humorous concern, 
and as a preamble I was handed the photo- 
graph which I had already studied on my own 
account. 

“Isn’t he a dear?” asked Bob’s mother. 
“Would you have known him, Duncan?” 

“I did know him,” said I. “Spotted him at 
a glance. He’s the same old Bob all over.” 

I was fortunate enough to meet the swift 
glance I got for that, for in sheer sweetness 
and affection it outdid all remembered glances 
of the past. In a moment it was as though I 
had more than regained the lost ground of 

13 


No Hero 


lost years. And in another moment, on the 
heels of the discovery, came the still more 
startling one that I was glad to have regained 
my ground, was thankful to be reinstated, and 
strangely, acutely, yet uneasily happy, as I 
had never been since the old days in this very 
room. 

Half in a dream I heard Catherine telling 
of her boy, of his Eton triumphs, how he had 
been one of the rackets pair two years, and 
in the eleven his last, but “in Pop” before he 
was seventeen, and yet as simple and un- 
affected and unspoilt with it all as the small 
boy whom I remembered. And I did remem- 
ber him, and knew his mother well enough 
to believe it all; for she did not chant his 
praises to organ music, but rather hummed 
them to the banjo; and one felt that her own 
demure humour, so signal and so permanent 
a charm in Catherine, would have been the 
saving of half-a-dozen Bobs. 

“And yet,” she wound up at her starting- 
point, “it’s about poor old Bob I want to 
speak to you!” 

“Not in a fix, I hope?” 

14 


A Plenipotentiary 

“I hope not, Duncan.” 

Catherine was serious now. 

"Or mischief?” 

“That depends on what you mean by mis- 
chief.” 

Catherine was more serious still. 

“Well, there are several brands, but only 
one or two that really poison — unless, of 
course, a man is very poor.” 

And my mind harked back to its first sus- 
picion, of some financial embarrassment, now 
conceivable enough; but Catherine told me 
her boy was not poor, with the air of one who 
would have drunk ditchwater rather than let 
the other want for champagne. 

“It is just the opposite,” she added: “in 
little more than a year, when he comes of age, 
he will have quite as much as is good for 
him. You know what he is, or rather you 
don’t. I do. And if I were not his mother 
I should fall in love with him myself!” 

Catherine looked down on me as she re- 
turned from replacing Bob’s photograph on 
the mantlepiece. The humour had gone out 
of her eye; in its place was an almost animal 
15 


No Hero 


glitter, a far harder light than had accom- 
panied the significant reference to the patriotic 
impulse which she had nipped in the bud. It 
was probably only the old, old look of the 
lioness whose whelp is threatened, but it was 
something new to me in Catherine Evers, 
something half-repellent and yet almost wholly 
fine. 

“You don’t mean to say it’s that?” I asked 
aghast. 

“No, I don’t,” Catherine answered, with a 
hard little laugh. “He’s not quite twenty, re- 
member; but I am afraid that he is making a 
fool of himself, and I want it stopped.” 

I waited for more, merely venturing to nod 
my sympathetic concern. 

“Poor old Bob, as you may suppose, is not 
a genius. He is far too nice,” declared Cath- 
erine’s old self, “to be anything so nasty. 
But I always thought he had his head screwed 
on, and his heart screwed in, or I never would 
have let him loose in a Swiss hotel. As it 
was, I was only too glad for him to go with 
George Kennerley, who was as good at work 
at Eton as Bob was at games.” 

16 


A Plenipotentiary 

In Catherine’s tone, for all the books on her 
shelves, the pictures on her walls, there was 
no doubt at all as to which of the two an 
Eton boy should be good at, and I agreed 
sincerely with another nod. 

“They were to read together for an hour 
or so every day. I thought it would be a 
nice little change for Bob, and it was quite 
a chance; he must do a certain amount of 
work, you see. Well, they only went at the 
beginning of the month, and already they have 
had enough of each other’s society.” 

“You don’t mean that they’ve had a row?” 

Catherine inclined a mortified head. 

“Bob never had such a thing in his life be- 
fore, nor did I ever know anybody who suc- 
ceeded in having one with Bob. It does take 
two, you know. And when one of the two 
has an angelic temper, and tact enough for 
twenty ” 

“You naturally blame the other,” I put in, 
as she paused in visible perplexity. 

“But I don’t, Duncan, and that’s just the 
point. George is devoted to Bob, and is as 
nice as he can be himself, in his own sober, 


i7 


No Hero 


honest, plodding way. He may not have the 
temper, he certainly has not the tact, but he 
worships Bob and has come back quite mis- 
erable.” 

“Then he has come back, and you have 
seen him?” 

“He was here last night. You must know 
that Bob writes to me every day, even from 
Cambridge, if it’s only a line; and in yes- 
terday’s letter he mentioned quite casually 
that George had had enough of it and was 
off home. It was a little too casual to be quite 
natural in old Bob, and there are other things 
he has been mentioning in the same way. If 
any instinct is to be relied upon it is a moth- 
er’s, and mine amounted almost to second 
sight. I sent Master George a telegram, and 
he came in last night.” 

“Well?”’ 

“Not a word! There was bad blood be- 
tween them, but that was all I could get out 
of him. Vulgar disagreeables between Bob, 
of all people, and his greatest friend ! If you 
could have seen the poor fellow sitting where 
you are sitting now, like a prisoner in the 
18 


A Plenipotentiary 

dock! I put him in the witness-box instead, 
and examined him on scraps of Bob’s letters 
to me. It was as unscrupulous as you please, 
but I felt unscrupulous; and the poor dear 
was too loyal to admit, yet too honest to deny, 
a single thing.” 

“And ?” said I, as Bob’s mother paused 
again. 

“And,” cried she, with conscious melo- 
drama in the fiery twinkle of her eye — “and, 
I know all! There is an odious creature at 
the hotel — a widow, if you please ! A ‘ripping 
widow’ Bob called her in his first letter; then 
it was ‘Mrs. Lascelles’; but now it is only 
‘some people’ whom he escorts here, there, 
and everywhere. Some people, indeed!” 

Catherine smiled unmercifully. I relied 
upon my nod. 

“I needn’t tell you,” she went on, “that the 
creature is at least twenty years older than 
my baby, and not at all nice at that. George 
didn’t tell me, mind, but he couldn’t deny a 
single thing. It was about her that they fell 
out. Poor George remonstrated, not too dip- 
lomatically, I daresay, but I can quite see that 
l 9 


No Hero 


my Bob behaved as he was never known to 
behave on land or sea. The poor child has 
been bewitched, neither more nor less.” 

“He’ll get over it,” I murmured, with the 
somewhat shaky confidence born of my own 
experience. 

Catherine looked at me in mild surprise. 

“But it’s going on now, Duncan — it’s going 
on still!” 

“Well,” I added, with all the comfort that 
my voice would carry, and which an exag- 
gerated concern seemed to demand: “well, 
Catherine, it can’t go very far at his age!” 
Nor to this hour can I yet conceive a sounder 
saying, in all the circumstances of the case, 
and with one’s knowledge of the type of lad; 
but my fate was the common one of com- 
forters, and I was made speedily and pain- 
fully aware that I had now indeed said the 
most unfortunate thing. 

Catherine did not stamp her foot, but she 
did everything else required by tradition of 
the exasperated lady. Not go far? As if it 
had not gone too far already to be tolerated 
another instant longer than was necessary! 


20 


A Plenipotentiary 

“He is making a fool of himself — my boy 
— my Bob — before a whole hotelful of sharp 
eyes and sharper tongues! Is that not far 
enough for it to have gone? Duncan, it must 
be stopped, and stopped at once; but I am 
not the one to do it. I would rather it went 
on,” cried Catherine tragically, as though the 
pit yawned before us all, “than that his mother 
should fly to his rescue before all the world! 
But a friend might do it, Duncan — if ” 

Her voice had dropped. I bent my ear. 

“If only,” she sighed, “I had a friend who 
would !” 

Catherine was still looking down when I 
looked up; but the droop of the slender body, 
the humble angle of the cavalier hat, the faint 
flush underneath, all formed together a chal- 
lenge and an appeal which were the more 
irresistible for their sweet shamefacedness. 
Acute consciousness of the past (I thought), 
and (I even fancied) some penitence for a 
wrong by no means past undoing, were in 
every sensitive inch of her, as she sat a sup- 
pliant to the old player of that part. And 
there are emotions of which the body may 


21 


No Hero 


be yet more eloquent than the face; there was 
the figure of Watts’s “Hope” drooping over 
as she drooped, not more lissom and speaking 
than her own; just then it caught my eye, 
and on the spot it was as though the lute’s 
last string of that sweet masterpiece had vi- 
brated aloud in Catherine’s room. 

My hand shook as I reached for my trusty 
sticks, but I cannot say that my voice be- 
trayed me when I inquired the name of the 
Swiss hotel. 

“The Riffel Alp,” said Catherine — “above 
Zermatt, you know.” 

“I start to-morrow morning,” I rejoined, 
“if that will do.” 

Then Catherine looked up. I cannot de- 
scribe her look. Transfiguration were the idle 
word, but the inadequate, and yet more than 
one would scatter the effect of so sudden a 
burst of human sunlight. 

“Would you really go?” she cried. “Do 
you mean it, Duncan?” 

“I only wish,” I replied, “that it were to 
Australia.” 

“But then you would be weeks too late.” 


22 


A Plenipotentiary 

“Ah, that’s another story! I may be too 
late as it is.” 

Her brightness clouded on the instant ; only 
a gleam of annoyance pierced the cloud. 

“Too late for what, may I ask?” 

“Everything except stopping the banns.” 

“Please don’t talk nonsense, Duncan. 
Banns at nineteen!” 

“It is nonsense, I agree; at the same time 
the minor consequences will be the hardest 
to deal with. If they are being talked about, 
well, they are being talked about. You 
know Bob best: suppose he is making a fool 
of himself, is he the sort of fellow to stop 
because one tells him so? I should say not, 
from what I know of him, and of you.” 

“I don’t know,” argued Catherine, looking 
pleased with her compliment. “You used to 
have quite an influence over him, if you re- 
member.” 

“That’s quite possible; but then he was a 
small boy, now he is a grown man.” 

“But you are a much older one.” 

“Too old to trust to that.” 

“And you have been wounded in the war.” 


2 3 


No Hero 


“The hotel may be full of wounded offi- 
cers ; if not I might get a little unworthy pur- 
chase there. In any case I’ll go. I should 
have to go somewhere before many days. It 
may as well be to that place as to another. 
I have heard that the air is glorious; and I’ll 
keep an eye on Robin, if I can’t do anything 
else.” 

“That’s enough for me,” cried Catherine, 
warmly. “I have sufficient faith in you to 
leave all the rest to your own discretion and 
good sense and better heart. And I never 
shall forget it, Duncan, never, never! You 
are the one person he wouldn’t instantly sus- 
pect as an emissary, besides being the only one 
I ever — ever trusted well enough to — to take 
at your word as I have done.” 

I thought myself that the sentence might 
have pursued a bolder course without untruth 
or necessary complications. Perhaps my con- 
ceit was on a scale with my acknowledged in- 
firmity where Catherine was concerned. But 
I did think that there was more than trust 
in the eyes that now melted into mine; there 
was liking at least, and gratitude enough to 
24 


A Plenipotentiary 

inspire one to win infinitely more. I went 
so far as to take in mine the hand to which 
I had dared to aspire in the temerity of my 
youth; nor shall I pretend for a moment that 
the old aspirations had not already mounted 
to their old seat in my brain. On the con- 
trary, I was only wondering whether the 
honesty of voicing my hopes would nowise 
counterbalance the caddishness of the sort of 
stipulation they might imply. 

“All I ask/’ I was saying to myself, “is 
that you will give me another chance, and 
take me seriously this time, if I prove myself 
worthy in the way you want.” 

But I am glad to think I had not said it 
when tea came up, and saved a dangerous 
situation by breaking an insidious spell. 

I stayed another hour at least, and there 
are few in my memory which passed more 
deliciously at the time. In writing of it now 
I feel that I have made too little of Catherine 
Evers, in my anxiety not to make too much, 
yet am about to leave her to stand or to fall 
in the reader’s opinion by such impression 
as I have already succeeded in creating in his 

25 


No Hero 


or her mind. Let me add one word, or two, 
while yet I may. A baron’s daughter (though 
you might have known Catherine some time 
without knowing that), she had nevertheless 
married for mere love as a very young girl, 
and had been left a widow before the birth of 
her boy. I never knew her husband, though 
we were distant kin, nor yet herself during the 
long years through which she mourned him. 
Catherine Evers was beginning to recover 
her interest in the world when first we met; 
but she never returned to that identical fold 
of society in which she had been born and 
bred. It was, of course, despite her own per- 
formances, a fold to which the worldly wolf 
was no stranger; and her trouble had turned 
a light-hearted little lady into an eager, in- 
tellectual, speculative being, with a sort of 
shame for her former estate, and an undoubt- 
ed reactionary dislike of dominion and of 
petty pomp. Of her own high folk one 
neither saw nor heard a thing; her friends 
were the powerful preachers of most denom- 
inations, and one or two only painted or 
wrote; for she had been greatly exercised 
26 


A Plenipotentiary 

about religion, and somewhat solaced by the 
arts. 

Of her charm for me, a lad with a sneaking 
regard for the pen, even when I buckled on 
the sword, I need not be too analytical. No 
doubt about her kindly interest, in the first 
instance, in so morbid a curiosity as a subal- 
tern who cared for books and was prepared 
to extend his gracious patronage to pictures. 
This subaltern had only too much money, 
and if the truth be known, only too little 
honest interest in the career into which he 
had allowed himself to drift. An early stage 
of that career brought him up to London, 
where family pressure drove him on a day 
to Elm Park Gardens. The rest is easily con- 
ceived. Here was a woman, still young, 
though some years older than oneself; at- 
tractive, intellectual, amusing, the soul of 
sympathy, at once a spiritual influence and 
the best companion in the world; and for a 
time, at least, she had taken a perhaps im- 
prudent interest in a lad whom she so greatly 
interested herself, on so many and various 
2 7 


No Hero 


accounts. Must you marvel that the young 
fool mistook the interest, on both sides, for 
a more intense feeling, of which he for one 
had no experience at the time, and that he fell 
by his mistake at a ridiculously early stage of 
his career? 

It is, I grant, more surprising to find the 
same young man playing Harry Esmond (at 
due distance) to the same Lady Castlewood 
after years in India and a taste of two wars. 
But Catherine’s room was Catherine’s room, 
a very haunt of the higher sirens, charged 
with noble promptings and forgotten influ- 
ences and impossible vows. And you will 
please bear in mind that as yet I am but set- 
ting forth, from this rarefied atmosphere, upon 
my invidious mission. 


28 


CHAPTER II 


THE THEATRE OF WAR 

It is a far cry to Zermatt at the best of times, 
and that is not the middle of August. The 
annual rush was at its height, the trains 
crowded, the heat of them overpowering. I 
chose to sit up all night in my corner of an 
ordinary compartment, as a lesser evil than the 
wagon-lit in which you cannot sit up at all. 
In the morning one was in Switzerland, with 
a black collar, a rusty chin, and a countenance 
in keeping with its appointments. It was not 
as though the night had been beguiled for 
me by such considerations as are only proper 
to the devout pilgrim in his lady’s service. 

On the contrary, and to tell the honest 
truth, I found it quite impossible to sustain 
such a serious view of the very special service 
to which I was foresworn : the more I thought 
of it, in one sense, the less in another, until 
29 


No Hero 


my only chance was to go forward with grim 
humour in the spirit of impersonal curiosity 
which that attitude induces. In a word, and 
the cant one which yet happens to express 
my state of mind to a nicety, I had already 
“weakened” on the whole business which I 
had been in such a foolish hurry to undertake, 
though not for one reactionary moment upon 
her for whom I had undertaken it. I was still 
entirely eager to “do her behest in pleasure 
or in pain”; but this particular enterprise I 
was beginning to view apart from its inspira- 
tion, on its intrinsic demerits, and the more 
clearly I saw it in its own light, the less pleas- 
ure did the prospect afford me. 

A young giant, whom I had not seen since 
his childhood, was merely understood to be 
carrying on a conspicuous, but in all prob- 
ability the most innocent, flirtation in a Swiss 
hotel; and here was I, on mere second-hand 
hearsay, crossing half Europe to spoil his per- 
fectly legitimate sport! I did not examine my 
project from the unknown lady’s point of view; 
it made me quite Hot enough to consider it 
from that of my own sex. Yet, the day before 

30 


The Theatre of War 


yesterday, I had more than acquiesced in the 
dubious plan. I had even volunteered for its 
achievement. The train rattled out one long, 
maddening tune to my own incessant marvel- 
lings at my own secret apostasy: the stuffy 
compartment was not Catherine’s sanctum of 
the quickening memorials and the olden spell. 
Catherine herself was no longer before me in 
the vivacious flesh, with her half playful pathos 
of word and look, her fascinating outward 
light and shade, her deeper and steadier in- 
tellectual glow. Those, I suppose, were the 
charms which had undone me, first as well 
as last ; but the memory of them was no solace 
in the train. Nor was I tempted to dream 
again of ultimate reward. I could see now 
no further than my immediate part, and a 
more distasteful mixture of the mean and of 
the ludicrous I hope never to rehearse 
again. 

One mitigation I might have set against 
the rest. Dining at the Rag the night before 
I left, I met a man who knew a man then 
staying at the Riffel Alp. My man was a 
sapper with whom I had had a very slight 
3 1 


No Hero 


acquaintance out in India, but he happened 
to be one of those good-natured creatures who 
never hesitate to bestir themselves or their 
friends to oblige a mere acquaintance: he 
asked if I had secured rooms, and on learn- 
ing that I had not, insisted on telegraphing to 
his friend to do his best for me. I had not 
hitherto appreciated the popularity of a resort 
which I happened only to know by name, nor 
did I even on getting at Lausanne a telegram 
to say that a room was duly reserved for me. 
It was only when I actually arrived, tired out 
with travel, toward the second evening, and 
when half of those who had come up with 
me were sent down again to Zermatt for their 
pains, that I felt as grateful as I ought to 
have been from the beginning. Here upon 
a mere ledge of the High Alps was a hotel 
with tier upon tier of windows winking in 
the setting sun. On every hand were daz- 
zling peaks piled against a turquoise sky, yet 
drawn respectfully apart from the incompar- 
able Matterhorn, that proud grim chieftain of 
them all. The grand spectacle and the magic 
air made me thankful to be there, if only for 
3 2 


The Theatre of War 


their sake, albeit the more regretful that a 
purer purpose had not drawn me to so fine 
a spot. 

My unknown friend at court, one Quinby, 
a civilian, came up and spoke before I had 
been five minutes at my destination. He was 
a very tall and extraordinarily thin man, with 
an ill-nourished red moustache, and an easy 
geniality of a somewhat acid sort. He had 
a trick of laughing softly through his nose, 
and my two sticks served to excite a sense of 
humour as odd as its habitual expression. 

“I’m glad you carry the outward signs,” 
said he, “for I made the most of your wounds 
and you really owe your room to them. You 
see, we’re a very representative crowd. That 
festive old boy, strutting up and down with his 
cigar, in the Panama hat, is really best known 
in the black cap: it’s old Sankey, the hang- 
ing judge. The big man with his back turned 
you will know in a moment when he looks 
this way: it’s our celebrated friend Belgrave 
Teale. He comes down in one or other of 
his parts every day: to-day it’s the genial 
squire, yesterday it was the haw-haw officer 
33 


No Hero 


of the Crimean school. But a real live officer 
from the Front we don’t happen to have had, 
much less a wounded one, and you limp 
straight into the breach.” 

I should have resented these pleasantries 
from an ordinary stranger, but this libertine 
might be held to have earned his charter, and 
moreover I had further use for him. We were 
loitering on the steps between the glass 
veranda and the terrace at the back of the 
hotel. The little sunlit stage was full of vivid, 
trivial, transitory life, it seemed as a foil to 
the vast eternal scene. The hanging judge 
still strutted with his cigar, peering jocosely 
from under the broad brim of his Panama; 
the great actor still posed aloof, the human 
Matterhorn of the group. I descried no 
showy woman with a tall youth dancing at- 
tendance ; among the brick-red English faces 
there was not one that bore the least resem- 
blance to the latest photograph of Bob Evers. 

A little consideration suggested my first 
move. 

“I think I saw a visitors’ book in the hall,” 
I said. “I may as well stick down my name.” 

34 


The Theatre of War 


But before doing so I ran my eye up and 
down the pages inscribed by those who had 
arrived that month. 

“See anybody you know?’’ inquired Quinby, 
who hovered obligingly at my elbow. It was 
really necessary to be as disingenuous as pos- 
sible, more especially with a person whose 
own conversation was evidently quite un- 
guarded. 

“Yes, by Jove I do! Robin Evers, of all 
people !” 

“Do you know him?” 

The question came pretty quickly. I was 
sorry I had said so much. 

“Well, I once knew a small boy of that 
name; but then they are not a small clan.” 

“His mother’s the Honourable,” said Quin- 
by, with studious unconcern, yet I fancied 
with increased interest in me. 

“I used to see something of them both,” I 
deliberately admitted, “when the lad was little. 
How has he turned out?” 

Quinby gave his peculiar nasal laugh. 

“A nice youth,” said he. “A very nice 
youth!” 


35 


No Hero 


“Do you mean nice or nasty?” I asked, in- 
clined to bridle at his tone. 

“Oh, anything but nasty,” said Quinby. 
“Only — well — perhaps a bit rapid for his 
years!” 

I stooped and put my name in the book 
before making any further remark. Then I 
handed Quinby my cigarette-case, and we sat 
down on the nearest lounge. 

“Rapid, is he?” said I. “That’s quite in- 
teresting. And how does it take him?” 

“Oh, not in any way that’s discreditable; 
but as a matter of fact, there’s a gay young 
widow here, and they’re fairly going it!” 

I lit my cigarette with a certain unexpected 
sense of downright satisfaction. So there was 
something in it after all. It had seemed such 
a fool’s errand in the train. 

“A young widow,” I repeated, emphasising 
one of Quinby’s epithets and ignoring the 
other. 

“I mean, of course, she’s a good deal older 
than Evers.” 

“And her name?” 

“A Mrs. Lascelles.” 

36 


The Theatre of War 


I nodded. 

“Do you happen to know anything about 
her, Captain Clephane?” 

“I can’t say I do.” 

“No more does anybody else,” said Quinby, 
“except that she’s an Indian widow of sorts.” 

“Indian!” I repeated with more interest. 

Quinby looked at me. 

“You’ve been out there yourself, perhaps?” 

“It was there I knew Hamilton,” said I, 
naming our common friend in the Engineers. 

“Yet you’re sure you never came across 
Mrs. Lascelles there?” 

“India’s a large place,” I said, smiling as I 
shook my head. 

“I wonder if Hamilton did,” speculated 
Quinby aloud. 

“And the Lascelleses,” I added, “are an- 
other large clan.” 

“Well,” he went on, after a moment’s further 
cogitation, “there’s nobody here can place 
this particular Mrs. Lascelles; but there are 
some who say things which they can tell you 
themselves. I’m not going to repeat them if 
you know anything about the boy. I only 
37 


No Hero 


wish you knew him well enough to give him 
a friendly word of advice!” 

"Is it so bad as all that?” 

"My dear sir, I don’t say there’s anything 
bad about it,” returned Quinby, who seemed 
to possess a pretty gift of suggestive negation. 
"But you may hear another opinion from other 
people, for you will find that the whole hotel 
is talking about it. No,” he went on, watch- 
ing my eyes, "it’s no use looking for them at 
this time of day; they disappear from morning 
to night; if you want to see them you must 
take a stroll when everybody else is thinking 
of turning in. Then you may have better 
luck. But here are the letters at last.” 

The concierge had appeared, hugging an 
overflowing armful of postal matter. In an- 
other minute there was hardly standing room 
in the little hall. My companion uttered his 
unlovely laugh. 

"And here comes the British lion roaring 
for his London papers! It isn’t his letters he’s 
so keen on, if you notice, Captain Clephane; 
it’s his Daily Mail, with the latest cricket, and 
after that the war. Teale is an exception, of 
38 


The Theatre of War 


course. He has a stack of press-cuttings every 
day. You will see him gloating over them 
in a minute. Ah! the old judge has got his 
Sportsman ; he reads nothing else except the 
Sporting Times, and he’s going back for the 
Leger. Do you see the man with the blue 
spectacles and the peeled nose? He was last 
Vice Chancellor but one at Cambridge. No, 
that’s not a Bishop, it’s an Archdeacon. All 
we want is a Cabinet Minister now; every 
evening there is a rumour that the Colonial 
Secretary is on his way, and most mornings 
you will hear that he has actually arrived 
under cloud of night.” 

The facetious Quinby did not confine his 
more or less caustic commentary to the well- 
known folk of whom there seemed no dearth; 
in the ten or twenty minutes that we sat to- 
gether he further revealed himself as a copious 
gossip, with a wide net alike for the big fish 
and for the smallest fry. There was a sheep- 
ish gentleman with a twitching face, and a 
shaven cleric in close attendance; the former 
a rich brand plucked from burning by the 
latter, whose temporal reward was the present 
39 


No Hero 


trip, so Quinby assured me during the time it 
took them to pass before our eyes through the 
now emptying hall. A delightfully boyish 
young American came inquiring waggishly 
for his “best girl” ; next moment I was given 
to understand that he meant his bride, who 
was ten times too good for him, with further 
trivialities to which the dressing-bell put a 
timely period. There was no sign of my Eton- 
ian when I went upstairs. 

As I dressed in my small low room, with 
its sloping ceiling of varnished wood, at the 
top of the house, I felt that after all I had 
learnt nothing really new respecting that dis- 
turbing young gentleman. Quinby had al- 
ready proved himself such an arrant gossip as 
to discount every word that he had said before 
I placed him in his proper type: it is one 
which I have encountered elsewhere, that of 
the middle-aged bachelor who will and must 
talk, and he had confessed his celibacy almost 
in his first breath; but a more pronounced 
specimen of the type I am in no hurry to 
meet again. If, however, there was some 
comfort in the thought of his more than prob- 
40 


The Theatre of War 


able exaggerations, there was none at all in 
the knowledge that these would be, if they 
had not already been, poured into every tol- 
erant ear in the place, if anything more freely 
than into mine. 

I was somewhat late for dinner, but the 
scandalous couple were later still, and all the 
evening I saw nothing of them. That, how- 
ever, was greatly due to this fellow Quinby, 
whose determined offices one could hardly 
disdain after once accepting favours from him. 
In the press after dinner I saw his ferret’s face 
peering this way and that, a good head higher 
than any other, and the moment our eyes met 
he began elbowing his way toward me. Only 
an ingrate would have turned and fled; and 
for the next hour or two I suffered Quinby 
to exploit my wounds and me for a good deal 
more than our intrinsic value. To do the 
man justice, however, I had no fault to find 
with the very pleasant little circle into which 
he insisted on ushering me, at one end of the 
glazed veranda, and should have enjoyed my 
evening but for an inquisitive anxiety to get 
in touch with the unsuspecting pair. Mean- 

41 


No Hero 


while the lilt of a waltz had mingled with the 
click of billiard balls and the talking and 
laughing which make a summer’s night vocal 
in that outpost of pleasure on the silent 
heights; and some of our party had gone off 
to dance. In the end I followed them, sticks 
and all; but there was no Bob Evers among 
the dancers, nor in the billiard-room, nor any- 
where else indoors. 

Then, last of all, I looked where Quinby 
had advised me to look, and there sure enough, 
on the almost deserted terrace, were the couple 
whom I had come several hundred miles to 
put asunder. Hitherto I had only realised the 
distasteful character of my task; now at a 
glance I had my first inkling of its difficulty ; 
and there ended the premature satisfaction 
with which I had learnt that there was “some- 
thing in” the rumour which had reached 
Catherine’s ears. 

There was no moon, but the mountain stars 
were the brightest I have ever seen in Europe. 
The mountains themselves stood back, as it 
were, darkling and unobtrusive; all that was 
left of the Matterhorn was a towering gap in 
42 


The Theatre of War 


the stars ; and in the faint cold light stood 
my friends, somewhat close together, and I 
thought I saw the red tips of two cigarettes. 
There was at least no mistaking the long loose 
limbs in the light overcoat. And because a 
woman always looks relatively taller than a 
man, this woman looked nearly as tall as this 
lad. 

“Bob Evers? You may not remember me, 
but my name’s Clephane — Duncan, you 
know!” 

I felt the veriest scoundrel, and yet the 
words came out as smoothly as I have written 
them, as if to show me that I had been a po- 
tential scoundrel all my life. 

“Duncan Clephane? Why, of course I re- 
member you. I should think I did! I say, 
though, you must have had a shocking time!” 

Bob’s voice was quite quiet for all his 
astonishment, his manner a miracle, though it 
was too dark to read the face; and his right 
hand held tenderly to mine, as his eyes fell 
upon my sticks, while his left poised a steady 
cigarette. And now I saw that there was only 
one red tip after all. 


43 


No Hero 


“I read your name in the visitors’ book,” 
said I, feeling too big a brute to acknowledge 
the boy’s solicitude for me. “I — I felt certain 
it must be you.” 

“How splendid!” cried the great fellow in 
his easy, soft, unconscious voice. “By the 
way, may I introduce you to Mrs. Lascelles? 
Captain Clephane’s one of our very oldest 
friends, just back from the Front, and pre- 
cious nearly blown to bits!” 


44 


CHAPTER III 


FIRST BLOOD 

Mrs. Lascelles and I exchanged our bows. 
For a dangerous woman there was a rather 
striking want of study in her attire. Over the 
garment which I believe is called a “rain- 
coat, ’’ the night being chilly, she had put on 
her golf-cape as well, and the effect was a little 
heterogeneous. It also argued qualities other 
than those for which I was naturally on the 
watch. Of the lady’s face I could see even 
less than of Bob’s, for the hood of the cape 
was upturned into a cowl, and even in Swit- 
zerland the stars are only stars. But while I 
peered she let me hear her voice, and a very 
rich one it was — almost deep in tone — the 
voice of a woman who would sing contralto. 

“Have you really been fighting?” she asked, 
in a way that was either put on, or else the 
expression of a more understanding sympathy 
than one usually provoked; for pity and ad- 
45 


No Hero 


miration, and even a helpless woman’s envy, 
might all have been discovered by an ear less 
critical and more charitable than mine. 

“Like anything !” answered Bob, in his un- 
affected speech. 

“Until they knocked me out,” I felt bound 
to add, “and that, unfortunately, was before 
very long.” 

“You must have been dreadfully wounded!” 
said Mrs. Lascelles, raising her eyes from my 
sticks and gazing at me, I fancied, with some 
intentness; but at her expression I could only 
guess. 

“Bowled over on Spion Kop,” said Bob, 
“and fairly riddled as he lay.” 

“But only about the legs, Mrs. Lascelles,” 
I explained ; “and you see I didn’t lose either, 
so I’ve no cause to complain. I had hardly 
a graze higher up.” 

“Were you up there the whole of that aw- 
ful day?” asked Mrs. Lascelles, on a low but 
thrilling note. 

“I’d got to be,” said I, trying to lighten the 
subject with a laugh. But Bob’s tone was 
little better. 


46 


First Blood 


“So he went staggering about among his 
men,” he must needs chime in, with other 
superfluities, “for I remember reading all 
about it in the papers, and boasting like any- 
thing about having known you, Duncan, but 
feeling simply sick with envy all the time. 
I say, you’ll be a tremendous hero up here, 
you know! I’m awfully glad you’ve come. 
It’s quite funny, all the same. I suppose you 
came to get bucked up? He couldn’t have 
gone to a better place, could he, Mrs. Las- 
celles?” 

“Indeed he could not. I only wish we 
could empty the hotel and fill every bed with 
our poor wounded!” 

I do not know why I should have felt so 
much surprised. I had made unto myself my 
own image of Mrs. Lascelles, and neither her 
appearance, nor a single word that had fallen 
from her, was in the least in keeping with my 
conception. Prepared for a certain type of 
woman, I was quite confounded by its uncon- 
ventional embodiment, and inclined to believe 
that this was not the type at all. I ought to 
have known life better. The most scheming 
47 


No Hero 


mind may well entertain an enthusiasm for 
arms, genuine enough in itself, at a martial 
crisis, and a natural manner is by no means 
incompatible with the cardinal vices. That 
manner and that enthusiasm were absolutely 
all that I as yet knew in favour of this Mrs. 
Lascelles; but they were enough to cause me 
irritation. I wished to be honest with some- 
body; let me at least be honestly inimical to 
her. I took out my cigarette-case, and when 
about to help myself, handed it, with a vile 
pretence at impulse, to Mrs. Lascelles in- 
stead. 

Mrs. Lascelles thanked me, in a higher key, 
but declined. 

“Don’t you smoke?” I asked blandly. 

“Sometimes.” 

“Ah! then I wasn’t mistaken. I thought I 
saw two cigarettes just now.” 

Indeed, I had first smelt and afterward dis- 
covered the second cigarette smouldering on 
the ground. Bob was smoking his still. The 
chances were that they had both been lighted 
at the same time ; therefore the other had been 
thrown away unfinished at my approach. And 
48 


First Blood 


that was one more variation from the type of 
my confident preconceptions. 

Young Robin had meanwhile had a quick 
eye on us both, and the stump of his own 
cigarette was glowing between a firmer pair 
of lips than I had looked for in that boyish 
face. 

“It’s so funny,” said he (but there was no 
fun in his voice), “the prejudice some people 
have against ladies smoking. Why shouldn’t 
they? Where’s the harm?” 

Now there is no new plea to be advanced 
on either side of this eternal question, nor is 
it one upon which I ever felt strongly, but 
just then I felt tempted to speak as though I 
did. I will not now dissect my motive, but 
it was vaguely connected with my mission, and 
not unrighteous from that standpoint. I said 
it was not a question of harm at all, but of 
what one admired in a woman, and what one 
did not: a man loved to look upon a woman 
as something above and beyond him, and 
there could be no doubt that the gap seemed 
a little less when both were smoking like twin 
funnels. That, I thought, was the adverse 
49 


No Hero 


point of view ; I did not say that it was mine. 

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Bob Evers, with 
the faintest coldness in his tone, though I fan- 
cied he was fuming within, and admired both 
his chivalry and his self-control. “To me it’s 
quite funny. I call it sheer selfishness. We 
enjoy a cigarette ourselves; why shouldn’t 
they? We don’t force them to be teetotal, do 
we? Is it bad form for a lady to drink a 
glass of wine? You mightn’t bicycle once, 
might you, Mrs. Lascelles? I daresay Cap- 
tain Clephane doesn’t approve of that yet!” 

“That’s hitting below the belt,” said I, laugh- 
ing. “I wasn’t giving you my opinion, but 
only the old-fashioned view of the matter. I 
wish you’d take one, Mrs. Lascelles, or I shall 
think I’ve been misunderstood all round!” 

“No, thank you, Captain Clephane. That 
old-fashioned feeling is infectious.” 

“Then I will,” cried Bob, “to show there’s 
no ill-feeling. You old fire-eater, I believe 
you just put up the argument to change the 
conversation. Wouldn’t you like a chair for 
those game legs?” 

“No, I’ve got to use them in moderation. 

5 ° 


First Blood 

I was going to have a stroll when I spotted 
you at last.” 

“Then we’ll all take one together,” cried the 
genial old Bob once more. “It’s a bit cold 
standing here, don’t you think, Mrs. Lascelles ? 
After you with the match!” 

But I held it so long that he had to strike 
another, for I had looked on Mrs. Lascelles 
at last. It was not an obviously interesting 
face, like Catherine’s, but interest there was 
of another kind. There was nothing intellect- 
ual in the low brow, no enthusiasm for books 
and pictures in the bold eyes, no witticism 
waiting on the full lips; but in the curve of 
those lips and the look from those eyes, as 
in the deep chin and the carriage of the hooded 
head, there was something perhaps not lower 
than intellect in the scale of personal equip- 
ment. There was, at all events, character and 
to spare. Even by the brief glimmer of a 
single match I could see that (and more) 
for myself. Then came a moment’s interval 
before Bob struck his light, and in that mo- 
ment her face changed. As I saw it next, it 
appealed, it entreated, until the second match 
5i 


No Hero 


was flung away. And the appeal was to such 
purpose that I do not think I was five seconds 
silent. 

“And what do you do with yourself up here 
all day? I mean you hale people; of course, 
I can only potter in the sun.” 

The question, perhaps, was better in inten- 
tion than in tact. I did not mean them to 
take it to themselves, but Bob’s answer showed 
that it was open to misconstruction. 

“Some people climb,” said he ; “you’ll know 
them by their noses. The glaciers are almost 
as bad, though, aren’t they, Mrs. Lascelles? 
Lots of people potter about the glaciers. It’s 
rather sport in the serracs; you’ve got to 
rope. But you’ll find lots more loafing about 
the place all day, reading Tauchnitz novels, 
and watching people on the Matterhorn 
through the telescope. That’s the sort of 
thing, isn’t it, Mrs. Lascelles?” 

She also had misunderstood the drift of my 
unlucky question. But there was nothing dis- 
ingenuous in her reply. It reminded me of 
her eyes, as I had seen them by the light of 
the first match. 


52 


First Blood 


“Mr. Evers doesn’t say that he is a climber 
himself, Captain Clephane; but he is a very 
keen one, and so am I. We are both begin- 
ners, so we have begun together. It’s such fun. 
We do some little thing every day; to-day we 
did the Schwarzee. You won’t be any wiser, 
and the real climbers wouldn’t call it climbing, 
but it means three thousand feet first and last. 
To-morrow we are going to the Monte Rosa 
hut. There is no saying where we shall end 
up, if this weather holds.” 

In this fashion Mrs. Lascelles not only made 
me a contemptuous present of information 
which I had never sought, but tacitly rebuked 
poor Bob for his gratuitous attempt at con- 
cealment. Clearly, they had nothing to con- 
ceal; and the hotel talk was neither more nor 
less than hotel talk. There was, nevertheless, 
a certain self-consciousness in the attitude of 
either (unless I grossly misread them both) 
which of itself afforded some excuse for the 
gossips in my own mind. 

Yet I did not know; every moment gave 
me a new point of view. On my remarking, 
genuinely enough, that I only wished I could 
53 


No Hero 


go with them, Bob Evers echoed the wish so 
heartily that I could not but believe that he 
meant what he said. On his side, in that case, 
there could be absolutely nothing. And yet, 
again, when Mrs. Lascelles had left us, as she 
did ere long in the easiest and most natural 
manner, and when we had started a last cigar- 
ette together, then once more I was not so 
sure of him. 

“That’s rather a handsome woman,” said I, 
with perhaps more than the authority to which 
my years entitled me. But I fancied it would 
“draw” poor Bob. And it did. 

“Rather handsome!” said he, with a soft 
little laugh not altogether complimentary to 
me. “Yes, I should almost go as far myself. 
Still I don’t see how you know; you haven’t 
so much as seen her, my dear fellow.” 

“Haven’t we been walking up and down 
outside this lighted veranda for the last ten 
minutes ?” 

Bob emittted a pitying puff. “Wait till you 
see her in the sunlight ! There’s not many of 
them can stand it, as they get it up here. But 
she can — like anything!” 

54 


First Blood 


“She has made an impression on you, Bob,” 
said I, but in so sedulously inoffensive a man- 
ner that his self-betrayal was all the greater 
when he told me quite hotly not to be an ass. 

Now I was more than ten years his senior, 
and Bob’s manners were as charming as only ' 
the manners of a nice Eton boy can be ; 
therefore I held my peace, but with difficulty 
refrained from nodding sapiently to myself. 
We took a couple of steps in silence, then Bob 
stopped short. I did the same. He was still 
a little stern; we were just within range of the 
veranda lights, and I can see and hear him 
to this day, almost as clearly as I did that 
night. 

“I’m not much good at making apologies,” 
he began, with rather less grace than becomes 
an apologist ; but it was more than enough for 
me from Bob. 

“Nor I at receiving them, my dear Bob.” 

“Well, you’ve got to receive one now, 
whether you accept it or not. I was the ass 
myself, and I beg your pardon!” 

Somehow I felt it was a good deal for a lad 
to say, at that age, and with Bob’s upbring- 
55 


No Hero 


ing and popularity, even though he said it 
rather scornfully in the fewest words. The 
scorn was really for himself, and I could well 
understand it. Nay, I was glad to have some- 
thing to forgive in the beginning, I with my 
unforgivable mission, and would have laughed 
the matter off without another word if Bob 
had let me. 

“I’m a bit raw on the point,” said he, taking 
my arm for a last turn, “and that’s the truth. 
There was a fellow who came out with me, 
quite a good chap really, and a tremendous 
pal of mine at Eton, yet he behaved like a 
lunatic about this very thing. Poor chap, he 
reads like anything, and I suppose he’d been 
overdoing it, for he actually asked me to 
choose between Mrs. Lascelles and himself! 
What could a fellow do but let the poor 
old simpleton go? They seem to think you 
can’t be pals with a woman without wanting 
to make love to her. Such utter rot! I con- 
fess I lose my hair with them ; but that doesn’t 
excuse me in the least for losing it with you.” 

I assured him, on the other hand, that his 
very natural irritability on the subject made 
56 


First Blood 


all the difference in the world. “But whom,” 
I added, “do you mean by “them’? Not any- 
body else in the hotel?” 

“Good heavens, no!” cried Bob, finding a 
fair target for his scorn at last. “Do you think 
I care twopence what’s said or thought by 
people I never saw in my life before and am 
never likely to see again? I know how I’m 
behaving. What does it matter what they 
think? Not that they’re likely to bother their 
heads about us any more than we do about 
them.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“I certainly don’t care,” declared my lordly 
youth, with obvious sincerity. “No, I was only 
thinking of poor old George Kennerley and 
people like him, if there are any. I did care 
what he thought, that is until I saw he was 
as mad as anything on the subject. It was 
too silly. I tell you what, though, I’d value 
your opinion!” And he came to another stop 
and confronted me again, but this time such 
a picture of boyish impulse and of innocent 
trust in me (even by that faint light) that I 
was myself strongly inclined to be honest 
57 


No Hero 

with him on the spot. But I only smiled and 
shook my head. 

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t,” I assured him. 

“But I tell you I would!” he cried. “Do 
you think there’s any harm in my going about 
with Mrs. Lascelles because I rather like her 
and she rather likes me? I won’t condescend 
to give you my word that I mean none.” 

What answer could I give? His charming 
frankness quite disarmed me, and the more 
completely because I felt that a dignified 
reticence would have been yet more charac- 
teristic of this clean, sweet youth, with his 
noble unconsciousness alike of evil and of evil 
speaking. I told him the truth — that there 
could be no harm at all with such a fellow 
as himself. And he wrung my hand until he 
hurt it; but the physical pain was a relief. 

Never can I remember going up to bed with 
a better opinion of another person, or a worse 
one of myself. How could I go on with my 
thrice detestable undertaking? Now that I 
was so sure of him, why should I even think 
of it for another moment? Why not go back 
to London and tell his mother that her early 
58 


First Blood 


confidence had not been misplaced, that the 
lad did know how to take care of himself, and 
better still of any woman whom he chose to 
honour with his bright, pure-hearted friend- 
ship? All this I felt as strongly as any con- 
viction I have ever held. Why, then, could I 
not write it at once to Catherine in as many 
words ? 

Strange how one forgets, how I had forgot- 
ten in half an hour! The reason came home 
to me on the stairs, and for the second time. 

It had come home first by the light of those 
two matches, struck outside in the dark part 
of the deserted terrace. It was not the lad 
whom I distrusted, but the woman of whose 
face I had then obtained my only glimpse — 
that night. 

I had known her, after all, in India years 
before. 


59 


CHAPTER IV 


A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE 

Once in the Town Hall at Simla (the only 
time I was ever there) it was my fortune to 
dance with a Mrs. Heymann of Lahore, a tall 
woman, but a featherweight partner, and in 
all my dancing days I never had a better waltz. 
To my delight she had one other left, though 
near the end, and we were actually dancing 
when an excitable person came out of the card- 
room, flushed with liquor and losses, and car- 
ried her off in the most preposterous manner. 
It was a shock to me at the time to learn that 
this outrageous little man was my partner’s 
husband. Months later, when I came across 
their case in the papers, it was, I am afraid, 
without much sympathy for the injured hus- 
band. The man was quite unpresentable, and 
I had seen no more of him at Simla, but of 
the woman just enough to know her by match- 
light on the terrace at the Riffel Alp. 

And this was Bob’s widow, this dashing 
60 


A Little Knowledge 

divorcee ! Dashing she was as I now remem- 
bered her, fine in mould, finer in spirit, reck- 
less and rebellious as she well might be. I 
had seen her submit before a ball-room, but 
with the contempt that leads captivity captive. 
Seldom have I admired anything more. It 
was splendid even to remember, the ready 
outward obedience, the not less apparent in- 
difference and disdain. There was a woman 
whom any man might admire, who had had 
it in her to be all things to some man! But 
Bob Evers was not a man at all. And this — 
and this — was his widow! 

Was she one at all? How could I tell? 
Yes, it was Lascelles, the other name in the 
case, to the best of my recollection. But had 
she any right to bear it? And even suppos- 
ing they had married, what had happened to 
the second husband? Widow or no widow, 
second marriage or no second marriage, de- 
fensible or indefensible, was this the right 
friend for a lad still fresh from Eton, the only 
son of his mother, who had sent me in secret 
to his side? 

There was only one answer to the last ques- 
61 


No Hero 


tion, whatever might be said or urged in reply 
to all the rest. I could not but feel that Cath- 
erine Evers had been justified in her instinct 
to an almost miraculous degree; that her 
worst fears were true enough, so far as the / 
lady was concerned; and that Providence 
alone could have inspired her to call in an 
agent who knew what I knew, and who there- 
fore saw his duty as plainly as I already saw 
mine. But it is one thing to recognise a pain- 
ful duty and quite another thing to know how 
to minimise the pain to those most affected by 
its performance. The problem was no easy 
one to my mind, and I lay awake upon it far 
into the night. 

Tired out with travel, I fell asleep in the 
end, to awake with a start in broad daylight. 
The sun was pouring through the uncurtained 
dormer-window of my room under the roof. 
And in the sunlight, looking his best in knick- 
erbockers, as only thin men do, with face 
greased against wind and glare, and blue 
spectacles in rest upon an Alpine wideawake, 
stood the lad who had taken his share in 
keeping me awake. 

“Pm awfully sorry,” he began. “It’s horrid 
62 


A Little Knowledge 

cheek, but when I saw your room full of light 
I thought you might have been even earlier 
than I was. You must get them to give you 
curtains up here.” 

He had a note in his hand and I thought 
by his manner there was something that he 
wished and yet hesitated to tell me. I accord- 
ingly asked him what it was. 

"It's what we were speaking about last 
night!” burst out Bob. “That’s why I’ve 
come to you. It’s these silly fools who can’t 
mind their own business and think everybody 
else is like themselves! Here’s a note from 
Mrs. Lascelles which makes it plain that that 
old idiot George is not the only one who has 
been talking about us, and some of the talk 
has reached her ears. She doesn’t say so in 
so many words, but I can see it’s that. She 
wants to get out of our expedition to Monte 
Rosa hut — wants me to go alone. The ques- 
tion is, ought I to let her get out of it? Does 
it matter one rap what this rabble says about 
us? I’ve come to ask your advice — you were 
such a brick about it all last night — and what 
you say I’ll do.” 

I had begun to smile at Bob’s notion of 
63 


No Hero 


“a rabble”: this one happened to include a 
few quite eminent men, as you have seen, to 
say nothing of the average quality of the 
crowd, of which I had been able to form some 
opinion of my own. But I had already 
noticed in Bob the exclusiveness of the type 
to which he belonged, and had welcomed it 
as one does welcome the little faults of the 
well-night faultless. It was his last sentence 
that made me feel too great a hypocrite to go 
on smiling. 

“It may not matter to you,” I said at length, 
“but it may to the lady.” 

“I suppose it does matter more to them?” 

The sunburnt face, puckered with a wry 
wistfulness, was only comic in its incongruous 
coat of grease. But I was under no tempta- 
tion to smile. I had to confine my mind 
pretty closely to the general principle, and 
rather studiously to ignore the particular in- 
stance, before I could bring myself to answer 
the almost infantile inquiry in those honest 
eyes. 

“My dear fellow, it must!” 

Bob looked disappointed but resigned. 

64 


A Little Knowledge 

“Well, then, I won’t press it, though I’m 
not sure that I agree. You see, it’s not as 
though there was or ever would be anything 
between us. The idea’s absurd. We are ab- 
solute pals and nothing else. That’s what 
makes all this such a silly bore. It’s so un- 
necessary. Now she wants me to go alone, 
but I don’t see the fun of that.” 

“Does she ask you to go alone?” 

“She does. That’s the worst of it.” 

I nodded, and he asked me why. 

“She probably thinks it would be the best 
answer to the tittle-tattlers, Bob.” 

That was not a deliberate lie; not until the 
words were out did it occur to me that Mrs. 
Lascelles might now have another object in 
getting rid of her swain for the day. But 
Bob’s eyes lighted in a way that made me 
feel a deliberate liar. 

“By Jove!” he said, “I never thought of 
that. I don’t agree with her, mind, but if 
that’s her game I’ll play it like a book. So 
long, Duncan! I’m not one of those chaps 
who ask a man’s advice without the slightest 
intention of ever taking it!” 

65 


No Hero 


“But I haven’t ventured to advise you,” I 
reminded the boy, with a cowardly eye to the 
remotest consequences. 

“Perhaps not, but you’ve shown me what’s 
the proper thing to do.” And he went away 
to do it there and then, like the blameless ex- 
ception that I found him to so many human 
rules. 

I had my breakfast upstairs after this, and 
lay for some considerable time a prey to feel- 
ings which I shall make no further effort to 
expound; for this interview had not altered, 
but only intensified them; and in any case they 
must be obvious to those who take the trouble 
to conceive themselves in my unenviable po- 
sition. 

And it was my ironic luck to be so circum- 
stanced in a place where I could have enjoyed 
life to the hilt! Only to lie with the window 
open was to breathe air of a keener purity, 
a finer temper, a more exhilarating freshness, 
than had ever before entered my lungs; and 
to get up and look out of the window was 
to peer into the limpid brilliance of a gigantic 
crystal, where the smallest object was in star- 
66 


A Little Knowledge 

tling focus, and the very sunbeams cut with 
scissors. The people below trailed shadows 
like running ink. The light was ultra-trop- 
ical. One looked for drill suits and pith 
headgear, and was amazed to find pajamas in- 
sufficient at the open window. 

Upon the terrace on the other side, when 
I eventually came down, there were cane 
chairs and Tauchnitz novels under the um- 
brella tents, and the telescope out and trained 
upon a party on the Matterhorn. A group 
of people were waiting turns at the telescope, 
my friend Quinby and the hanging judge 
among them. But I searched under the um- 
brella tents as well as one could from the top 
of the steps before hobbling down to join the 
group. 

“I have looked for an accident through that 
telescope,” said the jocose judge, “fifteen 
Augusts running. They usually have one the 
day after I go.” 

“Good morning, sir!” was Quinby’s greet- 
ing; and I was instantly introduced to Sir 
John Sankey, with such a parade of my mili- 
tary history as made me wince and Sir John’s 
67 


No Hero 


eye twinkle. I fancied he had formed an 
unkind estimate of my rather overpowering 
friend, and lived to hear my impression con- 
firmed in unjudicial language. But our first 
conversation was about the war, and it lasted 
until the judge’s turn came for the teles- 
cope. 

“Black with people!” he ejaculated. “They 
ought to have a constable up there to regulate 
the traffic.” 

But when I looked it was long enough be- 
fore my inexperienced eye could discern the 
three midges strung on the single strand of 
cobweb against the sloping snow. 

“They are coming down,” explained the 
obliging Quinby. “That’s one of the most dif- 
ficult places, the lower edge of the top slope. 
It’s just a little way along to the right where 
the first accident was. ... By the way, 
your friend Evers says he’s going to do the 
Matterhorn before he goes.” 

It was unwelcome hearing, for Quinby 
had paused to regale me with a lightning 
sketch of the first accident, and no one had 
contradicted his gruesome details. 

68 


A Little Knowledge 

“Is young Evers a friend of yours ?” in- 
quired the judge. 

“He is.” 

The judge did not say another word. But 
Quinby availed himself of the first opportunity 
of playing Ancient Mariner to my Wedding 
Guest. 

“I saw you talking to them,” he told me 
confidentially, “last night, you know!” 

“Indeed.” 

He took me by the sleeve. 

“Of course I don’t know what you said, but 
it’s evidently had an effect. Evers has gone 
off alone for the first time since he has been 
here.” 

I shifted my position. 

“You evidently keep an eye on him, Mr. 
Quinby.” 

“I do, Clephane. I find him a diverting 
study. He is not the only one in this hotel. 
There’s old Teale on his balcony at the pres- 
ent minute, if you look up. He has the best 
room in the hotel; the only trouble is that it 
doesn’t face the sun all day; he’s not used to 
being in the shade, and you’ll hear him damn 
69 


No Hero 


the limelight-man in heaps one of these fine 
mornings. But your enterprising young 
friend is a more amusing person than Belgrave 
Teale.” 

I had heard enough of my enterprising 
young friend from this quarter. 

“Do you never make any expeditions your- 
self, Mr. Quinby?” 

“Sometimes.” Quinby looked puzzled. 
“Why do you ask?” he was constrained to 
add. 

“You should have volunteered instead of 
Mrs. Lascelles to-day. It would have been 
an excellent opportunity for prosecuting your 
own rather enterprising studies.” 

One would have thought that one’s displeas- 
ure was plain enough at last; but not a bit 
of it. So far from resenting the rebuff, the 
fellow plucked my sleeve, and I saw at a 
glance that he had not even listened to my 
too elaborate sarcasm. 

“Talk of the — lady!” he whispered. “Here 
she comes.” 

And a second glance intercepted Mrs. Las- 
celles on the steps, with her bold good looks 
70 


A Little Knowledge 

and her fine upstanding carriage, cut clean as 
a diamond in that intensifying atmosphere, 
and hardly less dazzling to the eye. Yet her 
cotton gown was simplicity’s self; it was the 
right setting for such natural brilliance, a 
brilliance of eyes and teeth and colouring, g. 
more uncommon brilliance of expression. In- 
deed it was a wonderful expression, brave rath- 
er than sweet, yet capable of sweetness too, and 
for the moment at least nobly free from the 
defensive bitterness which was to mark it later. 
So she stood upon the steps, the talk of the 
hotel, trailing, with characteristic independ- 
ence, a cane chair behind her, while she 
sought a shady place for it, even as I had 
stood seeking for her: before she found one 
I was hobbling toward her. 

“Oh, thanks, Captain Clephane, but I 
couldn’t think of allowing you! Well, then, 
between us, if you insist. Here under the 
wall, I think, is as good a place as any.” 

She pointed out a clear space in the rapidly 
narrowing ribbon of shade, and there I soon 
saw Mrs. Lascelles settled with her book (a 
trashy novel, that somehow brought Cathe- 
7i 


No Hero 


rine Evers rather sharply before my mind’s 
eye) in an isolation as complete as could be 
found upon the crowded terrace, and too in- 
tentional on her part to permit of an intrusion 
on mine. I lingered a moment, nevertheless. 

“So you didn’t go to that hut after all, Mrs. 
Lascelles?” 

“No.” She waited a moment before looking 
up at me. “And I’m afraid Mr. Evers will 
never forgive me,” she added after her look, 
in the rich undertone that had impressed me 
overnight, before the cigarette controversy. 

I was not going to say that I had seen Bob 
before he started, but it was an opportunity 
of speaking generally of the lad. Thus I found 
myself commenting on the coincidence of our 
meeting again — he and I — and again lying 
before I realised that it was a lie. But Mrs. 
Lascelles sat looking up at me with her fine 
and candid eyes, as though she knew as well 
as I which was the real coincidence, and knew 
that I knew into the bargain. It gave me the 
disconcerting sensation of being detected and 
convicted at one blow. Bob Evers failed me 
as a topic, and I stood like the fool I felt. 

72 


A Little Knowledge 

“I am sure you ought not to stand about 
so much, Captain Clephane.” 

Mrs. Lascelles was smiling faintly as I pre- 
pared to take her hint. 

“Doesn’t it really do you any harm?” she 
inquired in time to detain me. 

“No, just the opposite. I am ordered to 
take all the exercise I can.” 

“Even walking?” 

“Even hobbling, Mrs. Lascelles, if I don’t 
overdo it.” 

She sat some moments in thought. I 
guessed what she was thinking, and I was 
right. 

“There are some lovely walks quite near, 
Captain Clephane. But you have to climb a 
little, either going or coming.” 

“I could climb a little,” said I, making up 
my mind. “It’s within the meaning of the 
act — it would do me good. Which way will 
you take me, Mrs. Lascelles?” 

Mrs. Lascelles looked up quickly, surprised 
at a boldness on which I was already compli- 
menting myself. But it is the only way with 
a bold woman. 


73 


No Hero 

“Did I say I would take you at all, Captain 
deplane?’' 

“No, but I very much hope you will.” 

And our eyes met as fairly as they had done 
by matchlight the night before. 

“Then I will,” said Mrs. Lascelles, “because 
I want to speak to you.” 


74 


CHAPTER V 


A MARKED WOMAN 

We had come farther than was wise with- 
out a rest, but all the seats on the way were 
in full view of the hotel, and I had been irri- 
tated by divers looks and whisperings as we 
traversed the always crowded terrace. Bob 
Evers, no doubt, would have turned a deaf 
ear and a blind eye to them. I myself could 
pretend to do so, but pretence was evidently 
one of my strong points. I had not Bob’s fine 
natural regardlessness, for all my seniority 
and presumably superior knowledge of the 
world. 

So we had climbed the zigzags to the right 
of the Riffelberg and followed the footpath 
overlooking the glacier, in the silence en- 
joined by single file, but at last we were seated 
on the hillside, a trifle beyond that emerald 
patch which some humourist has christened the 
75 


No Hero 


Cricket-ground. Beneath us were the ser- 
racs of the Gorner Glacier, teased and tousled 
like a fringe of frozen breakers. Beyond the 
serracs was the main stream of comparatively 
smooth ice, with its mourning band of mo- 
raine, and beyond that the mammoth sweep 
and curve of the Theodule where these gla- 
ciers join. Peak after peak of dazzling snow 
dwindled away to the left. Only the gaunt 
Riffelhorn reared a brown head against the 
blue. And there we sat, Mrs. Lascelles and 
I, with all this before us and a rock behind, 
while I wondered what my companion meant 
to say, and how she would begin. 

I had not to wonder long. 

“You were very good to me last night, Cap- 
tain Clephane.” 

There was evidently no beating about the 
bush for Mrs. Lascelles. I thoroughly ap- 
proved, but was nevertheless somewhat em- 
barrassed for the moment. 

“I — really I don’t know how, Mrs. Las- 
celles!” 

“Oh, yes, you do, Captain Clephane; you 
recognised me at a glance, as I did you.” 

76 


A Marked Woman 


“I certainly thought I did,” said I, poking 
about with the ferrule of one of my sticks. 

“You know you did.” 

“You are making me know it.” 

“Captain Clephane, you knew it all along; 
but we won’t argue that point. I am not 
going to deny my identity. It is very good 
of you to give me the chance, if rather un- 
necessary. I am not a criminal. Still you 
could have made me feel like one, last night, 
and heaps of men would have done so, either 
for the fun of it or from want of tact.” 

I looked inquiringly at Mrs. Lascelles. She 
could tell me what she pleased, but I was not 
going to anticipate her by displaying an inde- 
pendent knowledge of matters which she 
might still care to keep to herself. If she 
chose to open up a painful subject, well, the 
pain be upon her own head. Yet I must say 
that there was very little of it in her face 
as our eyes met. There was the eager candour 
that one could not help admiring, with the 
glowing look of gratitude which I had done 
so ridiculously little to earn; but the fine 
flushed face betrayed neither pain, nor shame, 
77 


No Hero 


nor the affectation of one or the other. There 
was a certain shyness with the candour. That 
was all. 

“You know quite well what I mean,” con- 
tinued Mrs. Lascelles, with a genuine smile 
at my disingenuous face. “When you met me 
before it was under another name, which you 
have probably quite forgotten.” 

“No, I remember it/ 

“Do you remember my husband?” 

“Perfectly.” 

“Did you ever hear ” 

Her lip trembled. I dropped my eyes. 

“Yes,” I admitted, “or rather I saw it for 
myself in the papers. It’s no use pretending 
I didn't, nor yet that I was the least bit sur- 
prised or — or anything else!” 

That was not one of my tactful speeches. 
It was culpably, might indeed have been wil- 
fully, ambiguous; and yet it was the kind of 
clumsy and impulsive utterance which has the 
ring of a good intention, and is thus inoffen- 
sive except to such as seek excuses for offence. 
My instincts about Mrs. Lascelles did not 
place her in this category at all. Nevertheless, 
78 


A Marked Woman 


the ensuing pause was long enough to make 
me feel uneasy, and my companion only broke 
it as I was in the act of framing an apology. 

“May I bore you, Captain Clephane?” she 
asked abruptly. I looked at her once more. 
She had regained an equal mastery of face and 
voice, and the admirable candour of her eyes 
was undimmed by the smallest trace of tears. 

“You may try,” said I, smiling with the ob- 
vious gallantry. 

“If I tell you something about myself from 
that time on, will you believe what I say?” 

“You are the last person whom I should 
think of disbelieving.” 

“Thank you, Captain Clephane.” 

“On the other hand, I would much rather 
you didn’t say anything that gave you pain, 
or that you might afterward regret.” 

There was a touch of weariness in Mrs. Las- 
celles’s smile, a rather pathetic touch to my 
mind, as she shook her head. 

“I am not very sensitive to pain,” she re- 
marked. “That is the one thing to be said 
for having to bear a good deal while you are 
fairly young. I want you to know more 
79 


No Hero 


about me, because I believe you are the only 
person here who knows anything at all. And 
then — you didn’t give me away last night !” 

I pointed to the grassy ledge in front of us, 
such a vivid green against the house now a 
hundred feet below. 

“I am not pushing you over there,” I said. 
“I take about as much credit for that.” 

“Ah,” sighed Mrs. Lascelles, “but that dear 
boy, who turns out to be a friend of yours, 
he knows less than anybody else! He doesn’t 
even suspect. It would have hurt me, yes, 
it would have hurt even me, to be given away 
to him! You didn’t do it while I was there, 
and I know you didn’t when I had turned my 
back.” 

“Of course you know I didn’t,” I echoed 
rather testily as I took out a cigarette. The 
case reminded me of the night before. But 
I did not again hand it to Mrs. Lascelles. 

“Well, then,” she continued, “since you 
didn’t give me away, even without thinking, 
I want you to know that after all there isn’t 
quite so much to give away as there might 
have been. A divorce, of course, is always a 
80 


A Marked Woman 


divorce; there is no getting away from that, 
or from mine. But I really did marry again. 
And I really am the widow they think I am.” 

I looked quickly up at her, in pure pity and 
compassion for one gone so far in sorrow and 
yet such a little way in life. It was a sudderj 
feeling, an unpremeditated look, but I might 
as well have spoken aloud. Mrs. Lascelles 
read me unerringly, and she shook her head, 
sadly but decidedly, while her eyes gazed 
calmly into mine. 

“It was not a happy marriage, either,” she 
said, as impersonally as if speaking of another 
woman. “You may think what you like of 
me for saying so to a comparative stranger; 
but I won’t have your sympathy on false pre- 
tences, simply because Major Lascelles is 
dead. Did you ever meet him, by the way?” 

And she mentioned an Indian regiment. 
But the major and I had never met. 

“Well, it was not very happy for either of 
us. I suppose such marriages never are. I 
know they are never supposed to be. Even 
if the couple are everything to each other, 
there is all the world to point his finger, and 
81 


No Hero 


all the world’s wife to turn her back, and you 
have to care a good deal to get over that. 
But you may have been desperate in the first 
instance; you may have said to yourself that 
the fire couldn’t be much worse than the fry- 
ing-pan. In that case, of course, you deserve 
no sympathy, and nothing is more irritating 
to me than the sympathy I don’t deserve. It’s 
a matter of temperament; I’m obliged to 
speak out, even if it puts people more against 
me than they were already. No, you needn’t 
say anything, Captain Clephane; you didn’t 
express your sympathy, I stopped you in time 
. . . And yet it is rather hard, when one’s 

still reasonably young, with almost everything 
before one — to be a marked woman all one’s 
time!” 

Up to her last words, despite an inviting 
pause after almost every sentence, I had suc- 
ceeded in holding my tongue; though she was 
looking wistfully now at the distant snow- 
peaks and obviously bestowing upon herself 
the sympathy she did not want from me (as 
I had been told in so many words, if not 
more plainly in the accompanying brief en- 
82 


A Marked Woman 


counter between our eyes), yet had I resisted 
every temptation to put in my word, until 
these last two or three from Mrs. Lascelles. 
They, however, demanded a denial, and I 
told her it was absurd to describe herself in 
such terms. 

“I am marked,” she persisted, “wherever I 
go I may be known, as you knew me here. 
If it hadn’t been you it would have been some- 
body else, and I should have known of it in- 
directly instead of directly; but even suppos- 
ing I had escaped altogether at this hotel, the 
next one would probably have made up for 
it.” 

“Do you stay much in hotels?” 

There had been something in the mellow 
voice which made such a question only nat- 
ural, yet it was scarcely asked before I would 
have given a good deal to recall it. 

“There is nowhere else to stay,” said Mrs. 
Lascelles, “unless one sets up house alone, 
which is costlier and far less comfortable. 
You see, one does make a friend or two 
sometimes — before one is found out.” 

“But surely your people ” 

83 


No Hero 


This time I did check myself. 

“My people,” said Mrs. Lascelles, “have 
washed their hands of me.” 

“But Major Lascelles — surely his peo- 
ple ” 

“They washed their hands of him! You see, 
they would be the first to tell you, he had 
always been rather wild; but his crowning 
act of madness in their eyes was his marriage. 
It was worse than the worst thing he had 
ever done before. Still, it is not for me to 
say anything, or feel anything, against his 
family . . .” 

And then I knew that they were making 
her an allowance; it was more than I wanted 
to know; the ground was too delicate, and led 
nowhere in particular. Still, it was difficult 
not to take a certain amount of interest in a 
handsome woman who had made such a wreck 
of her life so young, who was so utterly alone, 
so proud and independent in her loneliness, 
and apparently quite fine-hearted and unspoilt. 
But for Bob Evers and his mother, the inter- 
est that I took might have been a little dif- 
ferent in kind; but even with my solicitude 
84 


A Marked Woman 


for them there mingled already no small con- 
sideration for the social solitary whom I 
watched now as she sat peering across the 
glacier, the foremost figure in a world of high 
lights and great backgrounds, and whom to 
watch was to admire, even against the great- 
est of them all. Alas! mere admiration could 
not change my task or stay my hand ; it could 
but clog me by destroying my singleness of 
purpose, and giving me a double heart to 
match my double face. 

Since, however, a detestable duty had been 
undertaken, and since as a duty it was more 
apparent than I had dreamt of finding it, there 
was nothing for it but to go through with the 
thing and make immediate enemies of my 
friends. So I set my teeth and talked of Bob. 
I was glad Mrs. Lascelles liked him. His 
father was a remote connection of mine, 
whom I had never met. But I had once 
known his mother very well. 

“And what is she like?” asked Mrs. Las- 
celles, calling her fine eyes home from infin- 
ity, and fixing them once more on me. 


85 


CHAPTER VI 


OUT OF ACTION 

Now if, upon a warm, soft, summer even- 
ing, you were suddenly asked to describe the 
perfect winter’s day, either you would have to 
stop and think a little, or your imagination is 
more elastic than mine. Yet you might have 
a passionate preference for cold sun and brac- 
ing airs. To me, Catherine Evers and this 
Mrs. Lascelles were as opposite to each other 
as winter and summer, or the poles, or any 
other notorious antitheses. There was no 
comparison between them in my mind, yet 
as I sat with one among the sunlit, unfa- 
miliar Alps, it was a distinct effort to picture 
the other in the little London room I knew 
so well. For it was always among her 
books and pictures that I thought of Cath- 
erine, and to think was to wish myself 
there at her side, rather than to wish her here 
at mine. Catherine’s appeal, I used to think, 
86 


Out of Action 


was to the highest and the best in me, to 
brain and soul, and young ambition, and withal 
to one’s love of wit and sense of humour. Mrs. 
Lascelles, on the other hand, struck me pri- 
marily in the light of some splendid and spir- 
ited animal. I still liked to dwell upon her 
dancing. She satisfied the mere eye more and 
more. But I had no reason to suppose that 
she knew right from wrong in art or literature, 
any more than she would seem to have dis- 
tinguished between them in life itself. Her 
Tauchnitz novel lay beside her on the grass 
and I again reflected that it would not have 
found a place on Catherine’s loftiest shelf. 
Catherine would have raved about the view 
and made delicious fun of Quinby and the 
judge, and we should have sat together talk- 
ing poetry and harmless scandal by the 
happy hour. Mrs. Lascelles probably took 
place and people alike for granted. But she 
had lived, and as an animal she was superb ! 
I looked again into her healthy face and 
speaking eyes, with their bitter knowledge 
of good and evil, their scorn of scorn, their 
redeeming honesty and candour. The contrast 

87 


No Hero 


was complete in every detail except the widow- 
hood of both women; but I did not pursue 
it any farther; for once more there was but 
one woman in my thoughts, and she sat near 
me under a red parasol — clashing so humanly 
with the everlasting snows! 

“You don’t answer my question, Captain 
Clephane. How much for your thoughts?” 

“I’ll make you a present of them, Mrs. Las- 
celles. I was beginning to think that a lot 
of rot has been written about the eternal snows 
and the mountain-tops and all the rest of it. 
There a few lines in that last little volume of 
Browning ” 

I stopped of my own accord, for upon re- 
flection the lines would have made a rather 
embarrassing quotation. But meanwhile Mrs. 
Lascelles had taken alarm on other grounds. 

“Oh, don't quote Browning!” 

“Why not?” 

“He is far too deep for me; besides, I don’t 
care for poetry, and I was asking you about 
Mrs. Evers.” 

“Well,” I said, with some little severity, 
“she’s a very clever woman.” 

88 


Out of Action 

“Clever enough to understand Browning?” 

“Quite.” 

If this was irony, it was also self-restraint, 
for it was to Catherine’s enthusiasm that I 
owed my own. The debt was one of such 
magnitude as a life of devotion could scarcely 
have repaid, for to whom do we owe so 
much as to those who first lifted the scales 
from our eyes and awakened within us a soul 
for all such things? Catherine had been to me 
what I instantly desired to become to this be- 
nighted beauty; but the desire was not worth 
entertaining, since I hardly expected to be 
many minutes longer on speaking terms with 
Mrs. Lascelles. I recalled the fact that it was 
I who had broached the subject of Bob Evers 
and his mother, together with my unpalatable 
motive for so doing. And I was seeking in 
my mind, against the grain, I must confess, 
for a short cut back to Bob, when Mrs. Las- 
celles suddenly led the way. 

“I don’t think,” said she, “that Mr. Evers 
takes after his mother.” 

“I’m afraid he doesn’t,” I replied, “in that 
respect.” 


89 


No Hero 


“And I am glad/’ she said. “I do like a 
boy to be a boy. The only son of his mother 
is always in danger of becoming something 
else. Tell me, Captain Clephane, are they 
very devoted to each other?” 

There was some new note in that expres- 
sive voice of hers. Was it merely wistful, was 
it really jealous, or was either element the 
product of my own imagination? I made 
answer while I wondered : 

“Absolutely devoted, I should say; but it’s 
years since I saw them together. Bob was 
a small boy then, and one of the jolliest. Still 
I never expected him to grow up the charming 
chap he is now.” 

Mrs. Lascelles sat gazing at the great curve 
of Theodule Glacier. I watched her face. 

“He is charming,” she said at length. “I 
am not sure that I ever met anybody quite 
like him, or rather I am quite sure that I 
never did. He is so quiet, in a way, and yet 
so wonderfully confident and at ease !” 

“That’s Eton,” said I. “He is the best type 
of Eton boy, and the best type of Eton boy,” 
I declared, airing the little condition with a 
90 


Out of Action 

flourish, “is one of the greatest works of 
God” 

“I daresay you’re right,” said Mrs. Las- 
celles, smiling indulgently; “but what is it? 
How do you define it? It isn’t 'side/ and 
yet I can quite imagine people who don’t 
know him thinking that it is. He is cock- 
sure of himself, but of nothing else; that 
seems to me to be the difference. No one 
could possibly be more simple in himself. 
He may have the assurance of a man of fifty, 
yet it isn’t put on ; it’s neither bumptious nor 
affected, but just as natural in Mr. Evers as 
shyness and awkwardness in the ordinary 
youth one meets. And he has the s avoir 
faire not to ask questions !” 

Were we all mistaken? Was this the way 
in which a designing woman would speak of 
the object of her designs? Not that I thought 
so hardly of Mrs. Lascelles myself; but I did 
think that she might well fall in love with 
Bob Evers, at least as well as he with her. 
Was this, then, the way in which a woman 
would be likely to speak of the young man 
with whom she had fallen in love? To me 
9i 


No Hero 


the appreciation sounded too frank and dis- 
cerning and acute. Yet I could not call it 
dispassionate, and frankness was this woman’s 
outstanding merit, though I was beginning to 
discover others as well. Moreover, the fact 
remained that they had been greatly talked 
about; that at any rate must be stopped and 
I was there to stop it. 

I began to pick my words. 

“It’s all Eton, except what is in the blood, 
and it’s all a question of manners, or rather 
of manner. Don’t misunderstand me, Mrs. 
Lascelles. I don’t say that Bob isn’t inde- 
pendent in character as well as in his ways, 
but only that when all’s said he’s still a boy 
and not a man. He can’t possibly have a 
man’s experience of the world, or even of him- 
self. He has a young head on his shoulders, 
after all, if not a younger one than many a 
boy with half the assurance that you admire 
in him.” 

Mrs. Lascelles looked at me point-blank. 

“Do you mean that he can’t take care of 
himself?” 

“I don’t say that.” 


92 


Out of Action 


“Then what do you say?” 

The fine eyes met mine without a flicker. 
The full mouth was curved at the corners in 
a tolerant, unsuspecting smile. It was hard 
to have to make an enemy of so handsome 
and good-humoured a woman. And was it nec- 
essary, was it even wise? As I hesitated she 
turned and glanced downward once more 
toward the glacier, then rose and went to the 
lip of our grassy ledge, and as she returned 
I caught the sound which she had been the 
first to hear. It was the gritty planting of 
nailed boots upon a hard, smooth rock. 

“T m afraid you can’t say it now,” whispered 
Mrs. Lascelles. “Here’s Mr. Evers himself, 
coming this way back from the Monte Rosa 
hut ! I’m going to give him a surprise !” 

And it was a genuine one that she gave 
him, for I heard his boyish greeting before 
I saw his hot brown face, and there was no 
mistaking the sudden delight of both. It was 
sudden and spontaneous, complete, until his 
eyes lit on me. Even then his smile did not 
disappear, but it changed, as did his tone. 

“Good heavens!” cried Bob. “How on 


93 


No Hero 


earth did you get up here? By rail to the 
Riffelberg, I hope?” 

“On my sticks.” 

“It was much too far for him,” added Mrs. 
Lascelles, “and all my fault for showing him 
the way. But I’m afraid there was contribu- 
tory obstinacy in Captain Clephane, because 
he simply wouldn’t turn back. And now tell 
us about yourself, Mr. Evers ; surely we were 
not coming back this way?” 

“We were not,” said Bob, with a something 
sardonic in his little laugh, “but I thought I 
might as well. It’s the long way, six miles 
on end upon the glacier.” 

“But have you really been to the hut?” 

“Rather!” 

“And where’s our guide?” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t be bothered with a guide 
all to myself.” 

“My dear young man, you might have 
stepped straight into a crevasse !” 

“I precious nearly did,” laughed Bob, again 
with something odd about his laughter; “but 
I say, do you know, if you won’t think me aw- 
fully rude, I’ll push on back and get changed. 

94 


Out of Action 

I’m as hot as anything and not fit to be 
seen.” 

And he was gone after very little more than 
a minute from first to last, gone with rather 
an elaborate salute to Mrs. Lascelles, and rath- 
er a cavalier nod to me. But then neither of us 
had made any effort to detain him and a 
notable omission I thought it in Mrs. Las- 
celles, though to the lad himself it may well 
have seemed as strange in the old friend as 
in the new. 

“What was it,” asked Mrs. Lascelles, when 
we were on our way home, “that you were 
going to say about Mr. Evers when he ap- 
peared in the flesh in that extraordinary way?” 

“I forget,” said I, immorally. 

“Really? So soon? Don’t you remember, 
I thought you meant that he couldn’t take care 
of himself, and you were just going to tell 
me what you did mean?” 

“Oh, well, it wasn’t that, because he can!” 

But, as a matter of fact, I had seen my way 
to taking care of Master Bob without saying 
a word either to him or to Mrs. Lascelles, or 
at all events without making enemies of them 
both. 


95 


CHAPTER VII 


SECOND FIDDLE 

My plan was quite obvious in its simplicity, 
and not in the least discreditable from my 
point of view. It was perhaps inevitable that 
a boy like Bob should imagine I was trying 
to “cut him out,” as my blunt friend Quinby 
phrased it to my face. I had not, of course, 
the smallest desire to do any such vulgar 
thing. All I wanted was to make myself, if 
possible, as agreeable to Mrs. Lascelles as this 
youth had done before me, and in any 
case to share with him all the perils of her 
society. In other words I meant to squeeze 
into “the imminent deadly breach” beside Bob 
Evers, not necessarily in front of him. But 
if there was nothing dastardly in this, neither 
was there anything heroic, since I was proof 
against that kind of deadliness if Bob was 
not. 

On the other hand, the whole character of 
my mission was affected by the decision at 
96 


Second Fiddle 


which I had now arrived. There was no 
longer a necessity to speak plainly to any- 
body. That odious duty was eliminated from 
my plan of campaign, and the “frontal attack” 
of recent history discarded for the “turning 
movement” of the day. So I had learnt some- 
thing in South Africa after all. I had learnt 
how to avoid hard knocks which might very 
well do more harm than good to the cause I 
had at heart. That cause was still sharply 
defined before my mind. It was the first and 
most sacred consideration. I wrote a reas- 
suring despatch to Catherine Evers, and took 
it myself to the little post-office opposite the 
hotel that very evening before dressing for 
dinner. But I cannot say that I was think- 
ing of Catherine when I proceeded to spoil 
three successive ties in the tying. 

Yet I can only repeat that I felt absolutely 
“proof” against the real cause of my solic- 
itude. It is the most delightful feeling where 
a handsome woman is concerned. The judg- 
ment is not warped by passion or clouded 
by emotion; you see the woman as she is, 
not as you wish to see her, and if she 
disappoint it does not matter. You are 
97 


No Hero 


not left to choose between systematic self- 
deception and a humiliating admission of your 
mistake. The lady has not been placed upon 
an impossible pedestal, and she has not toppled 
down. In this case the lady started at the 
most advantageous disadvantage; every ad- 
mirable quality, her candour, her courage, her 
spirited independence, her evident determina- 
tion to piece a broken life together again and 
make the best of it, told doubly in her favour 
to me with my special knowledge of her past. 
It would be too much to say that I was deeply 
interested; but Mrs. Lascelles had inspired 
me with a certain sympathy and dispassionate 
regard. Cultivated she was not, in the con- 
ventional sense, but she knew more than can 
be imbibed from books. She knew life at 
first hand, had drained the cup for herself, 
and yet could savour the lees. Not that she 
enlarged any further on her own past. Mrs. 
Lascelles was never a great talker, like Cath- 
erine ; but she was certainly a woman to 
whom one could talk. And talk to her I did 
thenceforward, with a conscientious convic- 
tion that I was doing my duty, and only an 
occasional qualm for its congenial character, 
98 


Second Fiddle 


while Bob listened with a wondering eye, or 
went his own way without a word. 

It is easy to criticise my conduct now. It 
would have been difficult to act otherwise at 
the time. I am speaking of the evening after 
my walk with Mrs. Lascelles, of the next day 
when it rained, and now of my third night at 
the hotel. The sky had cleared. The glass 
was high. There was a finer edge than ever 
on the silhouetted mountains against the stars. 
It appeared that Bob and Mrs. Lascelles had 
talked of taking their lunch to the Findelen 
Glacier on the next fine day, for he came up 
and reminded her of it as she sat with me 
in the glazed veranda after dinner. I had seen 
him standing alone under the stars a few min- 
utes before: so this was the result of his cogi- 
tation. But in his manner there was nothing 
studied, much less awkward, and his smile even 
included me, though he had not spoken to 
me alone all day. 

“Oh, no, I hadn’t forgotten, Mr. Evers. I 
am looking forward to it,” said my companion, 
with a smile of her own to which the most 
jealous swain could not have taken excep- 
tion. 


99 


No Hero 


Bob Evers looked hard at me. 

“ You’d better come, too,” he said. 

"It’s probably too far,” said I, quite intend- 
ing to play second fiddle next day, for it was 
really Bob’s turn. 

“Not for a man who has been up to the 
Cricket-ground,” he rejoined. 

“But it’s dreadfully slippery,” put in Mrs. 
Lascelles, with a sympathetic glance at my 
sticks. 

“Let him get them shod like alpenstocks,” 
quoth Bob, “and nails in his boots ; then they’ll 
be ready when he does the Matterhorn!” 

It might have passed for boyish banter, but 
I knew that it was something more; the use 
of the third person changed from chaff to 
scorn as I listened, and my sympathetic reso- 
lution went to the winds. 

“Thank you,” I replied; “in that case I 
shall be delighted to come, and I’ll take your 
tip at once by giving orders about my boots.” 

And with that I resigned my chair to Bob, 
not sorry for the chance; he should not be 
able to say that I had monopolised Mrs. Las- 
celles without intermission from the first. 
Nevertheless, I was annoyed with him for what 
ioo 


Second Fiddle 


he had said, and for the moment my actions 
were no part of my scheme. Consequently I 
was thus in the last mood for a familiarity 
from Quinby, who was hanging about the 
door between the veranda and the hall, and 
who would not let me pass. 

“That’s awfully nice of you,” he had the 
impudence to whisper. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Giving that poor young beggar another 
chance!” 

“I don’t understand you.” 

“Oh, I like that! You know very well that 
you’ve gone in on the military ticket and de- 
liberately cut the poor youngster ” 

I did not wait to hear the end of this gratui- 
tous observation. It was very rude of me, 
but in another minute I should have been 
guilty of a worse affront. My annoyance had 
deepened into something like dismay. It was 
not only Bob Evers who was misconstruing 
my little attentions to Mrs. Lascelles. I was 
more or less prepared for that. But here were 
outsiders talking about us — the three of us! 
So far from putting a stop to the talk, I had 
given it a regular fillip: here were Quinby 

IOI 


No Hero 


and his friends as keen as possible to see what 
would happen next, if not betting on a 
row. The situation had taken a sudden turn 
for the worse. I forgot the pleasant hours 
that I had passed with Mrs. Lascelles, and 
began to wish myself well out of the whole 
affair. But I had now no intention of getting 
out of the glacier expedition. I would not 
have missed it on any account. Bob had 
brought that on himself. 

And I daresay we seemed a sufficiently 
united trio as we marched along the pretty 
winding path to the Findelen next morning. 
Dear Bob was not only such a gentleman, but 
such a man, that it was almost a pleasure to 
be at secret issue with him; he would make 
way for me at our lady’s side, listen with in- 
terest when she made me spin my martial 
yarns, laugh if there was aught to laugh at, 
and in a word, give me every conceivable 
chance. His manners might have failed him 
for one heated moment overnight; they were 
beyond all praise this morning; and I repeat- 
edly discerned a morbid sporting dread of 
giving the adversary less than fair play. It 
was sad to me to consider myself as such to 


102 


Second Fiddle 


Catherine’s son, but I was determined not to 
let the thought depress me, and there was 
much outward occasion for good cheer. The 
morning was a perfect one in every way. The 
rain had released all the pungent aromas of 
the mountain woods through which we passed. 
Snowy height came in dazzling contrast with 
a turquoise sky. The toy town of Zermatt 
spattered the green hollow far below. And 
before me on the narrow path went Bob Evers 
in a flannel suit, followed by Mrs. Lascelles 
and her red parasol, though he carried her 
alpenstock with his own in readiness for the 
glacier. 

Thither we came in this order, I at least 
very hot from hard hobbling to keep up; but 
the first breath from the glacier cooled me 
like a bath, and the next like the great drink 
in the second stanza of the Ode to a Nightin- 
gale. I could have shouted out for pleasure, 
and must have done so but for the engrossing 
business of keeping a footing on the sloping 
ice with its soiled margin of yet more treach- 
erous moraine. Yet on the glacier itself I was 
less handicapped than I had been on the way, 
and hopped along finely with my two shod 
103 


No Hero 


sticks and the sharp new nails in my boots. 
Bob, however, was invariably in the van, and 
Mrs. Lascelles seemed more disposed to wait 
for me than to hurry after him. I think he 
pushed the pace unwittingly, under the prick 
of those emotions which otherwise were in 
such excellent control. I can see him now, con- 
tinually waiting for us on the brow of some 
glistening ice-slope, leaning on his alpen- 
stock and looking back, jet-black by contrast 
between the blinding hues of ice and sky. 

But once he waited on the brink of some 
unfathomable crevasse, and then we all three 
cowered together and peeped down; the sides 
were green and smooth and sinister, like a 
crack in the sea, but so close together that 
one could not have fallen out of sight; yet 
when Bob loosened a lump of ice and kicked 
it in we heard it clattering from wall to wall 
in prolonged diminuendo before the faint 
splash just reached our ears. Mrs. Lascelles 
shuddered, and threw out a hand to prevent 
me from peering farther over. The gesture 
was obviously impersonal and instinctive, as 
an older eye would have seen, but Bob’s was 
smouldering when mine met it next, and in the 
104 


Second Fiddle 


ensuing advance he left us farther behind 
than ever. But on the rock where we had our 
lunch he was once more himself, bright and 
boyish, careless and assured. So he continued 
till the end of that chapter. On the way home, 
moreover, he never once forged ahead, but 
was always ready with a hand for Mrs. Las- 
celles at the awkward places; and on the way 
through the woods, nothing would serve him 
but that I should set the pace, that we might 
all keep together. Judge therefore of my sur- 
prise when he came to my room, as I was 
dressing for the absurdly early dinner which 
is the one blot upon Riffel Alp arrangements, 
with the startling remark that we “might as 
well run straight with one another.” 

“By all means, my dear fellow,” said I, turn- 
ing to him with the lather on my chin. He 
was dressed already, as perfectly as usual, and 
his hands were in his pockets. But his fresh 
brown face was as grave as any judge’s, and 
his mouth as stern. I went on to ask, dis- 
ingenuously enough, if we had not been 
“running straight with each other” as it was. 

“Not quite,” said Bob Evers, dryly; “and 
we might as well, you know !” 

105 


No Hero 


“To be sure; but don’t mind if I go on 
shaving, and pray speak for yourself.” 

“I will,” he rejoined. “Do you remember 
our conversation the night you came?“ 

“More or less.” 

“I mean when you and I were alone to- 
gether, before we turned in.” 

“Oh, yes. I remember something about 
it.” 

“It would be too silly to expect you to re- 
member much,” he went on after a pause, 
with a more delicate irony than heretofore. 
“But, as a matter of fact, I believe I said it 
was all rot that people talked about the im- 
possibility of being mere pals with a woman, 
and all that sort of thing.” 

“I believe you did.’” 

“Well, then, that was rot. That’s all.” 

I turned round with my razor in mid-air. 

“My dear fellow!” I exclaimed. 

“Quite funny, isn’t it?” he laughed, but 
rather harshly, while his mountain bronze 
deepened under my scrutiny. 

“You are not in earnest, Bob!” said I; and 
on the word his laughter ended, his colour 
went. 

106 


Second Fiddle 

“I am,” he answered through his teeth. 
“Are you?” 

Never was war carried more suddenly into 
the enemy's country, or that enemy’s breath 
more completely taken away than mine. 
What could I say? “As much as you are, I 
should hope!” was what I ultimately said. 

The lad stood raking me with a steady fire 
from his blue eyes. 

“I mean to marry her,” he said, “if she will 
have me.” 

There was no laughing at him. Though 
barely twenty, as I knew, he was man enough 
for any age as we faced each other in my room, 
and a man who knew his own mind into the 
bargain. 

“But, my dear Bob,” I ventured to remon- 
strate, “you are years too young ” 

“That’s my business. I am in earnest. 
What about you?” 

I breathed again. 

“My good fellow,” said I, “you are at perfect 
liberty to give yourself away to me, but you 
really mustn’t expect me to do quite the same 
for you.” 

“I expect precious little, I can tell you!” 

107 


No Hero 


the lad rejoined hotly. “Not that it matters 
twopence so long as you are not misled by 
anything I said the other day. I prefer to run 
straight with you — you can run as you like 
with me. I only didn’t want you to think that 
I was saying one thing and doing another. As 
a matter of fact I meant all I said at the time, 
or thought I did, until you came along and 
made me look into myself rather more closely 
than I had done before. I won’t say how you 
managed it. You will probably see for your- 
self. But I’m very much obliged to you, what- 
ever happens. And now that we understand 
each other there’s no more to be said, and 
I’ll clear out.” 

There was, indeed, no more to be said, and 
I made no attempt to detain him; for I did see 
for myself, only too clearly and precisely, how 
I had managed to precipitate the very thing 
which I had come out from England expressly 
to prevent. 


108 


CHAPTER VIII 


PRAYERS AND PARABLES 

I had quite forgotten one element which 
plays its part in most affairs of the affections. 
I mean, of course, the element of pique. Bob 
Evers, with the field to himself, had been sen- 
sible and safe enough; it was my intrusion, 
and nothing else, which had fanned his boyish 
flame into this premature conflagration. Of 
that I felt convinced. But Bob would not be- 
lieve me if I told him so; and what else was 
there for me to tell him? To betray Catherine 
and the secret of my presence, would simply 
hasten an irrevocable step. To betray Mrs. 
Lascelles, and her secret, would certainly not 
prevent one. Both courses were out of the 
question upon other grounds. Yet what else 
was left? 

To speak out boldly to Mrs. Lascelles, to 
betray Catherine and myself to her? 

I shrank from that; nor had I any right to 
109 


No Hero 


reveal a secret which was not only mine. 
What then was I to do? Here was this lad 
professedly on the point of proposing to this 
woman. It was useless to speak to the lad; 
it was impossible to speak to the woman. To 
be sure, she might not accept him ; but the 
mere knowledge that she was to have the 
chance seemed enormously to increase my re- 
sponsibility in the matter. As for the dilemma 
in which I now found myself, deservedly as 
you please, there was no comparing it with 
any former phase of this affair. 

“ O, what a tangled web we weave, 

When first we practise to deceive ! ” 

The hackneyed lines sprang unbidden, as 
though to augment my punishment; then sud- 
denly I reflected that it was not in my own 
interest I had begun to practise my deceit; 
and the thought of Catherine braced me up, 
perhaps partly because I felt that it should. 
I put myself back into the fascinating little 
room in Elm Park Gardens. I saw the slender 
figure in the picture hat, I heard the half- 
humorous and half-pathetic voice. After all, 
it was for Catherine I had undertaken this 


no 


Prayers and Parables 

ridiculous mission ; she was therefore my first 
and had much better be my only consideration. 
I could not run with the hare after hunting 
with the hounds. And I should like to have 
seen Catherine’s face if I had expressed any 
sympathy with the hare! 

No; it was better to be unscrupulously 
stanch to one woman than weakly chivalrous 
toward both; and my mind was made up by 
the end of dinner. There was only one chance 
now of saving the wretched Bob, or rather 
one way of setting to work to save him; and 
that was by actually adopting the course with 
which he had already credited me. He 
thought I was “trying to cut him out.” Well, 
I would try! 

But the more I thought of him, of Mrs. Las- 
celles, of them both, the less sanguine I felt 
of success; for had I been she (I could not 
help admitting it to myself), as lonely, as 
reckless, as unlucky, I would have married the 
dear young idiot on the spot. Not that my 
own marriage (with Mrs. Lascelles) was an 
end that I contemplated for a moment as I 
took my cynical resolve. And now I trust 
that I have made both my position and my 


iii 


No Hero 


intentions very plain, and have written my- 
self down neither more of a fool nor less of 
a knave than circumstances (and one’s own 
infirmities) combined to make me at this 
juncture of my career. 

The design was still something bolder than 
its execution, and if Bob did not propose that 
night it was certainly no fault of mine. I 
saw him with Mrs. Lascelles on the terrace 
after dinner ; but I had neither the heart nor 
the face to thrust myself upon them. Every- 
thing was altered since Bob had shown me 
his hand; there were certain rules of the game 
which even I must now observe. So I left 
him in undisputed possession of the peril- 
ous ground, and being in a heavy glow from 
the strong air of the glacier, went early to my 
room ; where I lay long enough without a 
wink, but quite prepared for Bob, with news 
of his engagement, at every step in the cor- 
ridor. 

Next day was Sunday, and chiefly, I am 
afraid, because there was neither blind nor 
curtain to my dormer-window, and the morn- 
ing sun streamed full upon my pillow, I got 
up and went to early service in the little tin 
1 12 


Prayers and Parables 

Protestant Church. It was wonderfully well 
attended. Quinby was there, a head taller 
than anybody else, and some sizes smaller in 
heads. The American bridegroom came in 
late with his “best girl.” The late Vice 
Chancellor, with the peeled nose, and Mr. 
Belgrave Teale, fit for Church Parade, or for 
the afternoon act in one of his own fashion- 
plays, took round the offertory bags, into 
which Mr. Justice Sankey (in race-course 
checks) dropped gold. It was not the sort 
of service at which one cares to look about 
one, but I was among the early comers, and 
I could not help it. Mrs. Lascelles, however, 
was there before me, whereas Bob Evers was 
not there at all. Nevertheless, I did not mean 
to walk back with her until I saw her walking 
very much alone, a sort of cynosure even on 
the way from church, though humble and 
grave and unconscious as any country maid. 
I watched her with the rest, but in a spirit 
of my own. Some subtle change I seemed 
to detect in Mrs. Lascelles as in Bob. Had 
he really declared himself overnight, and 
had she actually accepted him? A new load 
seemed to rest upon her shoulders, a new 

113 


No Hero 


anxiety, a new care ; and as if to confirm my 
idea, she started and changed colour as I 
came up. 

“I didn’t see you in church,” she remarked, 
in her own natural fashion, when we had ex- 
changed the ordinary salutations. 

“I am afraid you wouldn’t expect to see me, 
Mrs. Lascelles.” 

“Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t, but I 
suppose,” added Mrs. Lascelles, as her rich 
voice fell into a pensive (but not a pathetic) 
key, “I suppose it is you who are much more 
surprised at seeing me. I can’t help it if you 
are, Captain Clephane. I am not really a re- 
ligious person. I have not flown to that ex- 
treme as yet. But it has been a comfort to 
me, sometimes ; and so, sometimes, I go.” 

It was very simply said, but with a sigh at 
the end that left me wondering whether she 
was in any new need of spiritual solace. Did 
she already find herself in the dilemma in 
which I had imagined her, and was it really 
a dilemma to her? New hopes began to chase 
my fears, and were gaining upon them when 
a flannel suit on the sunlit steps caused a tem- 
porary check : there was Bob waiting for us, 

U4 


Prayers and Parables 

his hands in his pockets, a smile upon his face, 
yet in the slope of his shoulders and the car- 
riage of his head a certain indefinable but very 
visible attention and intent. 

“Is Mrs. Evers a religious woman?” asked 
my companion, her step slowing ever so 
slightly as we approached. 

“Not exactly; but she knows all about it,” 
I replied. 

“And doesn’t believe very much? Then we 
shouldn’t hit it off,” exclaimed Mrs. Lascelles, 
“for I know nothing and believe all I can ! 
Nevertheless, I’m not going to church again 
to-day.” 

The last words were in a sort of aside, and 
I afterwards heard that Bob and Mrs. Las- 
celles had attended the later service together 
on the previous Sunday; but I guessed almost 
as much on the spot, and it put out of my head 
both the unjust assumption of the earlier re- 
mark, concerning Catherine, and the con- 
trast between them which Mrs. Lascelles 
could hardly afford to emphasise. 

“Let’s go somewhere else instead — Zermatt 
— or anywhere else you like,” I suggested, 
eagerly; but we were close to the steps, and 
n 5 


No Hero 


before she could reply Bob had taken off his 
straw hat to Mrs. Lascelles, and flung me 
a nod. 

“How very energetic!” he cried. “I only 
hope it’s a true indication of form, for I’ve 
got a scheme: instead of putting in another 
chapel I propose we stroll down to Zermatt 
for lunch and come back by the train.” 

Bob’s proposal was made pointedly to Mrs. 
Lascelles, and as pointedly excluded me, but 
she stood between the two of us with a charm- 
ing smile of good-humoured perplexity. 

“Now what am I to say? Captain Clephane 
was in the very act of making the same sug- 
gestion !” 

Bob glared on me for an instant in spite of 
Eton and all his ancestors. 

“We’ll all go together,” I cried before he 
could speak. “Why not?’” 

Nor was this mere unreasoning or good- 
natured impulse, since Bob could scarcely 
have pressed his suit in my presence, while 
I should certainly have done my best to re- 
tard it; still, it was rather a relief to me to 
see him shake his head with some return of 
his natural grace. 

116 


Prayers and Parables 

“My idea was to show Mrs. Lascelles the 
gorge,” said Bob, “but you can do that as 
well as I can; you can’t miss it; besides, I’ve 
seen it, and I really ought to stay up here, 
as a matter of fact, for I’m on the track of a 
guide for the Matterhorn.” 

We looked at him narrowly with one accord, 
but he betrayed no signs of desperate impulse, 
only those of “climbing fever,” and I at least 
breathed again. 

“But if you want a guide,” said I, “Zer- 
matt’s full of them.” 

“I know,” said he, “but it’s a particular 
swell I’m after, and he hangs out up here in 
the season. They expect him back from a big 
trip any moment, and I really ought to be on 
the spot to snap him up.” 

So Bob retired, in very fair order after all, 
and not without his laughing apologies to Mrs. 
Lascelles; but it was sad to me to note the 
spurious ring his laugh had now; it was like 
the death-knell of the simple and the single 
heart that it had been my lot, if not my mis- 
sion, to poison and to warp. But the less 
said about my odious task, the sooner to its 
fulfilment, which now seemed close at hand. 

1 17 


No Hero 


It was not in fact so imminent as I supposed, 
for the descent into Zermatt is somewhat too 
steep for the conduct of a necessarily delicate 
debate. Sound legs go down at a compulsory 
run, and my companion was continually wait- 
ing for me to catch her up, only to shoot ahead 
again perforce. Or the path was too narrow 
for us to walk abreast, and you cannot become 
confidential in single file; or the noise of fall- 
ing waters drowned our voices, when we stood 
together on that precarious platform in the 
cool depths of the gorge, otherwise such an 
admirable setting for the scene that I fore- 
saw. Then it was a beautiful walk in itself, 
with its short tacks in the precipitous pine- 
woods above, its sudden plunge into the 
sunken gorge below, its final sweep across 
the green valley beyond ; and it was all so new 
to us both that there were impressions to ex- 
change or to compare at every turn. In fine, 
and with all the will in the world, it was quite 
impossible to get in a word about Bob before 
luncheon at the Monte Rosa, and by that time 
I for one was in no mood to introduce so 
difficult a topic. 

But an opportunity there came, an oppor- 
1 1 8 


Prayers and Parables 

tunity such as even I could not neglect; on 
the contrary, I made too much of it, as the 
sequel will show. It was in the little museum 
which every tourist goes to see. We had 
shuddered over the gruesome relics of the first 
and worst catastrophe on the Matterhorn, and 
were looking in silence upon the primitive 
portraits of the two younger Englishmen who 
had lost their lives on that historic occasion. 
It appeared that they had both been about 
the same age as Bob Evers, and I pointed 
this out to my companion. It was a particu- 
larly obvious remark to make; but Mrs. Las- 
celles turned her face quickly to mine, and 
the colour left it in the half-lit, half-haunted 
little room, which we happened to have all to 
ourselves. 

“Don’t let him go up, Captain Clephane; 
don’t let him, please!” 

“Do you mean Bob Evers?” I asked, to 
gain time while I considered what to say ; for 
the intensity of her manner took me aback. 

“You know I do,” said Mrs. Lascelles, im- 
patiently; “don’t let him go up the Matter- 
horn to-night, or to-morrow morning, or 
whenever it is that he means to start.” 

119 


No Hero 


“But, my dear Mrs. Lascelles, who am I to 
prevent that young gentleman from doing 
what he likes?” 

“I thought you were more or less related?” 

“Rather less than more.” 

“But aren’t you very intimate with his 
mother ?” 

I had to meet a pretty penetrating look. 

“I was once.” 

“Well, then, for his mother’s sake you ought 
to do your best to keep him out of danger, 
Captain Clephane.” 

It was my turn to repay the look which I 
had just received. No doubt I did so with 
only too much interest; no doubt I was equally 
clumsy of speech; but it was my opportunity, 
and something or other must be said. 

“Quite so, Mrs. Lascelles; and for his 
mother’s sake,” said I, “I not only will do, 
I have already done, my best to keep the lad 
out of harm’s way. He is the apple of her 
eye ; they are simply all the world to one an- 
other. It would break her heart if anything 
happened to him — anything — if she were to 
lose him in any sense of the word.” 

I waited a moment, thinking she would 


120 


Prayers and Parables 

speak, prepared on my side to be as explicit 
as she pleased; but Mrs. Lascelles only looked 
at me with her mouth tight shut and her eyes 
wide open; and I concluded — somewhat un- 
easily, I will confess — that she saw for herself 
what I meant. 

“As for the Matterhorn, 1 ” I went on, “that, 
I believe, is not such a very dangerous ex- 
ploit in these days. There are permanent 
chains and things where there used to be pol- 
ished precipices. It makes the real mountain- 
eers rather scornful; anyone with legs and 
a head, they will tell you, can climb the Mat- 
terhorn nowadays. If I had the legs I’d go 
with him, like a shot.” 

“To share the danger, I suppose?” 

“And the sport.” 

“Ah,” said Mrs. Lascelles, “and the sport, 
of course! I had forgotten that!” 

Yet I did not perceive that I had been found 
out, for nothing was further from my mind 
than to prolong the parable to which I had 
stooped in passing a few moments before. 
It had served its purpose, I conceived. I 
had given my veiled warning; it never oc- 
curred to me that Mrs. Lascelles might be 


1 2 1 


No Hero 


indulging in a veiled retort. I thought she 
was annoyed at the hint that I had given her. 
I began to repent of that myself. It had quite 
spoilt our day, and so many and long were 
the silences, as we wandered from little shop 
to little shop, and finally with relief to the 
train, that I had plenty of time to remember 
how much we had found to talk about all the 
morning. 

But matters were coming to a head in spite 
of me, for Bob Evers waylaid us on our re- 
turn, and, with hardly a word to Mrs. Las- 
celles, straightway followed me to my room. 
He was pale with a suppressed anger which 
flared up even as he closed my door behind 
him, but though his honest face was now in 
flames, he still kept control of his tongue. 

“I want you to lend me one of those sticks 
of yours,” he said, quietly; “the heaviest, for 
choice.” 

“What the devil for?” I demanded, thinking 
for the moment of no shoulders but my own. 

“To give that bounder Quinby the licking 
he deserves!” cried Bob: “to give it him 
now at once, when the post comes in, and 
there are plenty of people about to see the 


122 


Prayers and Parables 

fun. Do you know what he’s been saying 
and spreading all over the place ?” 

“No,” I answered, my heart sinking within 
me. “What has he been saying?” 

The colour altered on Bob’s face, altered and 
softened to a veritable blush, and his eyes 
avoided mine. 

“I’m ashamed to tell you, it makes me so 
sick,” he said, disgustedly. “But the fact is 
that he’s been spreading a report about Mrs. 
Lascelles; it has nothing on earth to do with 
me. It appears he only heard it himself this 
morning, by letter, but the brute has made 
good use of his time! I only got wind of it 
an hour or two ago, of course quite by acci- 
dent, and I haven’t seen the fellow since; but 
he’s particularly keen on his letters, and either 
he explains himself to my satisfaction or I 
make an example of him before the hotel. 
It’s a thing I never dreamt of doing in my 
life, and I’m sorry the poor beast is such a 
scarecrow ; but it’s a duty to punish that sort 
of crime against a woman, and now I’m sure 
you’ll lend me one of your sticks. I am only 
sorry I didn’t bring one with me.” 

“But wait a bit, my dear fellow,” said I, 
123 


No Hero 


for he was actually holding out his hand: 
“you have still to tell me what the report 
was.” 

“Divorce!” he answered in a tragic voice. 
“Clephane, the fellow says she was divorced 
in India, and that it was — that it was her 
fault!” 

He' turned away his face. It was in a flame. 

“And you are going to thrash Quinby for 
saying that?” 

“If he sticks to it, I most certainly am,” said 
Bob, the fire settling in his blue eyes. 

“I should think twice about it, Bob, if I 
were you.” 

“My dear man, what else do you suppose 
I have been thinking of all the afternoon?” 

“It will make a fresh scandal, you see.” 

“I can’t help that.” 

And Bob shut his mouth with a self-willed 
snap. 

“But what good will it do?” 

“A liar will be punished, that’s all! It’s 
no use talking, Clephane; my mind is made 
up.” 

“But are you so sure that it’s a lie?” I was 
obliged to say it at last, reluctantly enough, 
124 


Prayers and Parables 

yet with a wretched feeling that I might just 
as well have said it in the beginning. 

“Sure?” he echoed, his innocent eyes widen- 
ing before mine. “Why, of course I’m sure! 
You don’t know what pals we’ve been. Of 
course I never asked questions, but she’s told 
me heaps and heaps of things; it would fit 
in with some of them, if it were true.” 

Then I told him that it was true, and how 
I knew that it was true, and my reason for 
having kept all that knowledge to myself until 
now. “I could not give her away even to you, 
Bob, nor yet tell you that I had known her 
before; for you would have been certain to 
ask when and how; and it was in her first 
husband’s time, and under his name.” 

It was a comfort to be quite honest for once 
with one of them, and it is a relief even now 
to remember that I was absolutely honest with 
Bob Evers about this. He said almost at 
once that he would have done the same him- 
self, and even as he spoke his whole manner 
changed toward me. His face had darkened 
at my unexpected confirmation of the odious 
rumour, but already it was beginning to lighten 
toward me, as though he found my attitude 
125 


No Hero 


the one redeeming feature in the new aspect 
of affairs. He even thanked me for my late 
reserve, obviously from his heart, and in a 
way that went to mine on more grounds 
than one. It was as though a kindness 
to Mrs. Lascelles was already the greatest 
possible kindness to him. 

“But I am glad you have told me now,” he 
added, “for it explains many things. I was 
inclined to look upon you, Duncan — you 
won’t mind my telling you now — as a bit of 
a deliberate interloper! But all the time you 
knew her first, and that alters everything. I 
hope to out you still, but I sha’n’t any longer 
bear you a grudge if you out me l” 

I was horrified. 

“My dear fellow,” I cried, “do you mean to 
say this makes no difference?” 

“It does to Quinby. I must keep my hands 
off him, I suppose, though to my mind he 
deserves his licking all the more.” 

“But does it make no difference to you? 
My good boy, can you at your age seriously 
think of marrying a woman who has been mar- 
ried twice already, and divorced once?” 

“I didn’t know that when I thought of it 
126 


Prayers and Parables 

first,” he answered, doggedly, “and I am not 
going to let it make a difference now. Do 
you suppose I would stand away from her be- 
cause of anything that’s past and over? Do 
they stand away from us for — that sort of 
thing?” 

Of course I said that was rather different, 
with as much conviction as though the an- 
cient dogma had been my own. 

“But, Duncan, you know it’s the very last 
thing you’re dreaming of doing yourself!” 

And again I argued, as feebly as you please, 
that it was quite different in my case — that I 
was a good ten years older than he, and not 
my mother’s only son. 

Bob stiffened on the spot. 

“My mother must take care of herself,” said 
he; “and I,” he added, “I must take care of 
myself, if you don’t mind. And I hope you 
won’t, for you’ve been most awfully good to 
me, you know ! I never thought so until these 
last few minutes ; but now I sha’n’t forget it, 
no matter how it all turns out!” 


127 


CHAPTER IX 


SUB JUDICE 

Well, I made a belated attempt to earn my 
young friend’s good opinion. I kept out of 
his way after dinner, and went in search of 
Quinby instead. I felt I had a crow of my 
own to pluck with this gentleman, who owed 
to my timely intervention a far greater im- 
munity than he deserved. It was in the little 
billiard-room I found him, pachydermatously 
applauding the creditable attempts of Sir John 
Sankey at the cannon game, and as studiously 
ignoring the excellent shots of an undistin- 
guished clergyman who was beating the judge. 
Quinby made room for me beside him, with 
a civility which might have caused me some 
compunction, but I repaid him by coming 
promptly to my point. 

“What’s this report about Mrs. Lascelles?” 
I asked, not angrily at all, for naturally my 
feeling in the matter was not so strong as 
128 


Sub Jndice 


Bob’s, but with a certain contemptuous in- 
terest, if a man can judge of his own out- 
ward manner from his inner temper at the 
time. 

Quinby favoured me with a narrow though 
a sidelong look; the room was very full, and 
in the general chit-chat, punctuated by the 
constant clicking of the heavy balls, there 
was very little danger of our being over- 
heard. But Quinby was careful to lower his 
voice. 

“It’s perfectly true,” said he, “if you mean 
about her being divorced.” 

“Yes, that was what I heard; but who 
started the report?” 

“Who started it. You may well ask! Who 
starts anything in a place like this? Ah, good 
shot, Sir John, good shot!” 

“Never mind the good shots, Quinby. I 
really rather want to talk to you about this. 
I sha’n’t keep you long.” 

“Talk away, then. I am listening.” 

“Mrs. Lascelles and I are rather friends.” 

“So I can see.” 

“Very well, then, I want to know who start- 
ed all this. It may be perfectly true, as you 
129 


No Hero 


say, but who found it out? If you can’t tell 
me I must ask somebody else.” 

The ruddy Alpine colouring had suddenly 
become accentuated in the case of Quinby. 

“As a matter of fact,” said he, “it was I 
who first heard of it, quite by chance. You 
can’t blame me for that, Clephane.” 

“Of course not,” said I encouragingly. 

“Well, unfortunately I let it out; and you 
know how things get about in an hotel.” 

“It was unfortunate,” I agreed. “But how 
on earth did you come to hear?” 

Quinby hummed and hawed; he had heard 
from a soldier friend, a man who had known 
her in India, a man whom I knew myself, in 
fact Hamilton the sapper, who had tele- 
graphed to Quinby to secure me my room. I 
ought to have been disarmed by the coinci- 
dence; but I recalled our initial conversation, 
about India and Hamilton and Mrs. Las- 
celles, and I could not consider it a coinci- 
dence at all. 

“You don’t mean to tell me,” said I, aping 
the surprise I might have felt, “that our friend 
wrote and gave Mrs. Lascelles away to you 
of his own accord ?” 


130 


Sub Judice 


But Quinby did not vouchsafe an answer. 
“Hard luck, Sir John!” cried he, as the judge 
missed an easy cannon, leaving his opponent 
a still easier one, which lost him the game. 
I proceeded to press my question in a some- 
what stronger form, though still with all the 
suavity at my command. 

“Surely,” I urged, “you must have written 
to ask him about her first?” 

“That’s my business, I fancy,” said Quinby, 
with a peculiarly aggressive specimen of the 
nasal snigger of which enough was made in 
a previous chapter, but of which Quinby him- 
self never tired. 

“Quite,” I agreed; “but do you also con- 
sider it your business to inquire deliber- 
ately into the past life of a lady whom I believe 
you only know by sight, and to spread the 
result of your inquiries broadcast in the hotel? 
Is that your idea of chivalry? I shall ask Sir 
John Sankey whether it is his,” I added, as 
the judge joined us with genial condescension, 
and I recollected that his proverbial harshness 
toward the male offender was redeemed by 
an extraordinary sympathy with the women. 
Thereupon I laid a general case before Sir 

131 


No Hero 


John, asking him point-blank whether he con- 
sidered such conduct as Quinby’s (but I did 
not say whose the conduct was) either justi- 
fiable in itself or conducive to the enjoyment 
of a holiday community like ours. 

“It depends,” said the judge, cocking a 
critical eye on the now furious Quinby. “I 
am afraid we most of us enjoy our scandal, 
and for my part I always like to see a humbug 
catch it hot. But if the scandal’s about a 
woman, and if it’s an old scandal, and if she’s 
a lonely woman, that quite alters the case, and 
in my opinion the author of it deserves all he 
gets.” 

At this Quinby burst out, with an unre- 
strained heat that did not lower him in my 
estimation, though the whole of his tirade was 
directed exclusively against me. I had been 
talking “at” him, he declared. I might as 
well have been straightforward while I was 
about it. He, for his part, was not afraid to 
take the responsibility for anything he might 
have said. It was perfectly true, to begin with. 
The so-called Mrs. Lascelles, who was such a 
friend of mine, had been the wife of a German 
Jew in Lahore, who had divorced her on her 
132 


Sub Judice 


elopement with a Major Lascelles, whom she 
had left in his turn, and whose name she had 
not the smallest right to bear. Quinby ex- 
ercised some restraint in the utterances of 
these calumnies, or the whole room must 
have heard them, but even as it was we had 
more listeners than the judge when my turn 
came. 

“I won’t give you the lie, Quinby, because 
I am quite sure you don’t know you are tell- 
ing one,” said I; “but as a matter of fact you 
are giving currency to two. In the first place, 
this lady is Mrs. Lascelles, for the major did 
marry her; in the second place, Major Las- 
celles is dead.” 

“And how do you know?” inquired Quinby, 
with a touch of genuine surprise to mitigate 
an insolent disbelief. 

“You forget,” said I, “that it was in India 
I knew your own informant. I can only say 
that my information in all this matter is a good 
deal better than his. I knew Mrs. Lascelles 
herself quite well out there ; I knew the other 
side of her case. It doesn’t seem to have 
struck you, Quinby, that such a woman must 
have suffered a good deal before, and after, 
i33 


No Hero 


taking such a step. Or I don’t suppose you 
would have spread yourself to make her suffer 
a little more.” 

And I still consider that a charitable view 
of his behaviour ; but Quinby was of another 
opinion, which he expressed with his offensive 
little laugh as he lifted his long body from the 
settee. 

“This is what one gets for securing a room 
for a man one doesn’t know!” said he. 

“On the contrary,” I retorted, “I haven’t 
forgotten that, and I have saved you some- 
thing because of it. I happen to have saved 
you no less than a severe thrashing from a 
stronger man than myself, who is even more 
indignant with you than I am, and who wanted 
to borrow one of my sticks for the purpose!” 

“And it would have served him perfectly 
right,” was the old judge’s comment, when the 
mischief-maker had departed without return- 
ing my parting shot. “I suppose you meant 
young Evers, Captain Clephane?” 

“I did indeed, Sir John. I had to tell him 
the truth in order to restrain him.” 

The old judge raised his eyebrows. 

“Then you hadn’t to tell him it before? 

J 34 


Sub Judice 


You are certainly consistent, and I rather ad- 
mire your position as regards the lady. But 
I am not so sure that it was altogether fair 
toward the lad. It is one thing to stand up 
for the poor soul, my dear sir, but it would 
be another thing to let a nice boy like that 
go and marry her!” 

So that was the opinion of this ripe old citi- 
zen of the world! It ought not to have irri- 
tated me as it did. It would be Catherine’s 
opinion, of course; but a dispassionate view 
was not to be expected from her. I had not 
hitherto thought otherwise, myself; but now 
I experienced a perverse inclination to take 
the opposite side. Was it so utterly impossible 
for a woman with this woman’s record to make 
a- good wife to some man yet? I did not 
admit it for an instant; he would be a lucky 
man who won so healthy and so good a heart; 
thus I argued to myself with Mrs. Lascelles 
in my mind, and nobody else. But Bob Evers 
was not a man, I was not sure that he was 
out of his teens, and to think of him was to 
think at once with Sir John Sankey and all 
the rest. Yes, yes, it would be madness and 
suicide in such a youth; there could be no 
i35 


No Hero 


two opinions about that; and yet I felt indig- 
nant at the mildest expression of that which 
I myself could not deny. 

Such was my somewhat chaotic state of 
mind when I had fled the billiard-room in my 
turn, and put on my overcoat and cap to com- 
mune with myself outside. Nobody did jus- 
tice to Mrs. Lascelles; it was terribly hard to 
do her justice; those were perhaps the ideas 
that were oftenest uppermost. I did not see 
how I was to be the exception and prove the 
rule; my brief was for Bob, and there was 
an end of it. It was foolish to worry, especially 
on such a night. The moon had waxed since 
my arrival, and now hung almost round and 
altogether dazzling in the little sky the moun- 
tains left us. Yet I had the terrace all to my- 
self; the magnificent voice of our latest celeb- 
rity had drawn everybody else in doors, or 
under the open drawing-room windows 
through which it poured out into the glorious 
night. And in the vivid moonlight the very 
mountains seemed to have gathered about 
the little human hive upon their heights, to 
be listening to the grand rich notes that had 
some right to break their ancient silence. 

136 


Sub Judice 


“ If doughty deeds my lady please, 
Right soon I’ll mount my steed; 
And strong his arm, and fast his seat, 
That bears frae me the meed. 

I’ll wear thy colours in my cap, 

Thy picture at my heart ; 

And he that bends not to thine eye 
Shall rue it to his smart ! ” 


It was a brave new setting to brave old 
lines, as simple and direct as themselves, stu- 
diously in keeping, passionate, virile, almost 
inspired; and the whole so justly given that 
the great notes did not drown the words as 
they often will, but all came clean to the ear. 
No wonder the hotel held its breath ! I was 
standing entranced myself, an outpost of 
the audience underneath the windows, whose 
fringe I could just see round the uttermost 
angle of the hotel, when Bob Evers ran down 
the steps, and came toward me in such guise 
that I could not swear to him till the last 
yard. 

“Don’t say a word,” he whispered excitedly. 
“I’m just off!” 

“Off where?” I gasped, for he had changed 
into full mountaineering garb, and there was 
i37 


No Hero 


his greased face beaming in the moonlight, 
and the blue spectacles twinkling about his 
hat-band, at half-past nine at night. 

“Up the Matterhorn !” 

“At this time of night?” 

“It is a bit late, and that’s why I want it 
kept quiet. I don’t want any fuss or advice. 
I’ve got a couple of excellent guides waiting 
for me just below by the shoemaker’s hut. 
I told you I was on their tracks. Well, it was 
to-night or never as far as they were con- 
cerned, they are so tremendously full up. So 
to-night it is, and don’t you remind me of 
my mother!” 

I was thinking of her when he spoke ; for 
the song had swung through a worthy re- 
frain into another verse, and now I knew it 
better. It was Catherine who had introduced 
me to all my lyrics ; it was to Catherine I had 
once hymned this one in my unformed heart. 

“But I thought,” said I, as I forced my- 
self to think, “that everybody went up to the 
Cabane overnight, and started fresh from 
there in the morning?” 

“Most people do, but it’s as broad as it’s 
long,” declared Bob, airily, rapidly, and with 
138 


Sub Judice 


the same unwonted excitement, born as I 
thought of his unwonted enterprise. “You 
have a ripping moonlight walk instead of a 
so-called night's rest in a frowsy hut. We 
shall get our breakfast there instead, and I 
expect to start fresher than if I had slept there 
and been knocked up at two o’clock in the 
morning. That’s all settled, anyhow, and you 
can look for me on top through the telescope 
after breakfast. I shall be back before dark, 
and then ” 

“Well, what then?” I asked, for Bob had 
made a significant and yet irresolute pause, 
as though he could not quite bring himself 
to tell me something that was on his mind. 

“Well,” he echoed nonchalantly at last, as 
though he had not hesitated at all, “as a mat- 
ter of fact, to-morrow night I am to know 
my fate. I have asked Mrs. Lascelles to marry 
me, and she hasn’t said no, but I am giving 
her till to-morrow night. That’s all, Clephane. 
I thought it a fair thing to let you know. If 
you want to waltz in and try your luck while 
I’m gone, there’s nothing on earth to prevent 
you, and it might be most satisfactory to 
everybody. As a matter of fact, I’m only 
i39 


No Hero 

going so as to get over the time and keep 
out of the way.” 

“As a matter of fact?” I queried, waving 
a little stick toward the lighted windows. 
“Listen a minute, and then tell me !” 

And we listened together to the last and 
clearest rendering of the refrain — 

“ Then tell me how to woo thee, Love ; 

O tell me how to woo thee ! 

For thy dear sake, nae care I’ll take, 

Tho’ ne’er another trow me ! ” 

“What tosh!” shouted Bob (his mother 
should have heard him) through the ap- 
plause. “Of course I’m going to take care 
of myself, and of course I meant to rush the 
Matterhorn while I’m here, but between our- 
selves that’s my only reason for rushing it to- 
night.” 

Yet had he no boyish vision of quick pro- 
motion in the lady’s heart, no primitive de- 
sire to show his mettle out of hand, to set her 
trembling while he did or died? He had, I 
thought, and he had not; that shining face 
could only have reflected a single and candid 
heart. But it is these very natures, so simple 
140 


Sub Judice 


and sweet-hearted and transparent, that are 
least to be trusted on the subject of their own 
motives and emotions, for they are the soonest 
deceived, not only by others but in them- 
selves. Or so I venture to think, and even 
then reflected, as I shook my dear lad’s hand 
by the side parapet of the moonlit terrace, and 
watched him run down into the shadows of 
the fir-trees and so out of my sight with two 
dark and stalwart figures that promptly de- 
tached themselves from the shadows of the 
shoemaker’s hut. A third figure mounted to 
where I now sat listening to the easy, swing- 
ing, confident steps, as they fell fainter and 
fainter upon the ear; it was the shoemaker 
himself who had shod my two sticks with 
spikes and my boots with formidable nails ; 
and we exchanged a few words in a mixture 
of languages which I should be very sorry to 
reproduce. 

“Do you know those two guides?” is what 
I first asked in effect. 

“Very well, monsieur.” 

“Are they good guides?” 

“The very best, monsieur.” 


CHAPTER X 


THE LAST WORD 

“Is that you?” 

It was an hour or so later, but still I sat 
ruminating upon the parapet, within a yard 
or two of the spot where I had first ac- 
costed Bob Evers and Mrs. Lascelles. I 
had retraced the little sequence of subse- 
quent events, paltry enough in themselves, 
yet of a certain symmetry and some im- 
portance as a whole. I had attacked and de- 
fended my own conduct down to that hour, 
when I ought to have been formulating its 
logical conclusion, and during my unprofit- 
able deliberations the night had aged and 
altered (as it were) behind my back. There 
was no more music in the drawing-room. 
There were no more people under the draw- 
ing-room windows. The lights in all the lower 
windows were not what they had been; it was 
the bedroom tiers that were illuminated now. 


142 


The Last Word 


But I did not realise that there was less light 
outside until I awoke to the fact that Mrs. 
Lascelles was peering tentatively toward me, 
and putting her question in such an uncertain 
tone. 

“That depends who I am supposed to be,” 
I answered, laughing as I rose to put my per- 
sonality beyond doubt. 

“How stupid of me!” laughed Mrs. Las- 
celles in her turn, though rather nervously to 
my fancy. “I thought it was Mr. Evers!” 

I had hard work to suppress an exclama- 
tion. So he had not told her what he was 
going to do, and yet he had not forbidden 
me to tell her. Poor Bob was more subtle 
than I had supposed, but it was a simple sub- 
tlety, a strange chord but still in key with his 
character as I knew it. 

“I am sorry to disappoint you,” said I. 
“But I am afraid you won’t see any more of 
Bob Evers to-night.” 

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Las- 
celles, suspiciously. 

“I wonder he didn’t tell you,” I replied, to 
gain time in which to decide how to make the 
best use of such an unforeseen opportunity. 

143 


No Hero 

“Well, he didn’t; so please will you, Cap- 
tain Clephane?” 

“Bob Evers,” said I, with befitting grav- 
ity, “is climbing the Matterhorn at this mo- 
ment.” 

“Never!” 

“At least he has started.” 

“When did he start?” 

“An hour or more ago, with a couple of 
guides.” 

“He told you, then?” 

“Only just as he was starting.” 

“Was it a sudden idea?” 

“More or less, I think.” 

I waited for the next question, but that was 
the last of them. Just then the interloping 
cloud floated clear of the moon, and I saw 
that my companion was wrapped up as on the 
earlier night, in the same unconventional com- 
bination of rain-coat and golf-cape; but now 
the hood hung down, and the sudden rush of 
moonlight showed me a face as full of sheer 
perplexity and annoyance as I could have 
hoped to find it, and as free from deeper 
feeling. 

“The silly boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Lascelles 
144 


The Last Word 


at last. “I suppose it really is pretty safe, 
Captain Clephane?” 

“Safer than most dangerous things, I be- 
lieve; and they are the safest, as you know, 
because you take most care. He has a couple 
of excellent guides; the chance of getting 
them was partly why he went. In all human 
probability we shall have him back safe and 
sound, and fearfully pleased with himself, 
long before this time to-morrow. Meanwhile, 
Mrs. Lascelles,” I continued with the courage 
of my opportunity, “it is a very good chance 
for me to speak to you about our friend Bob. 
I have wanted to do so for some little 
time.” 

“Have you, indeed?” said Mrs. Lascelles, 
coldly. 

“I have,” I answered imperturbably; “and 
if it wasn’t so late I should ask for a hearing 
now.” 

“Oh, let us get it over, by all means !” 

But as she spoke Mrs. Lascelles glanced 
over the shoulder that she shrugged so con- 
temptuously, toward the lights in the bedroom 
windows, most of which were wide open. 

“We could walk toward the zig-zags,” I 
i45 


No Hero 


suggested. “There is a seat within a hundred 
yards, if you don’t think it too cold to sit, but 
in any case I needn’t keep you many minutes. 
Bob Evers,” I continued, as my suggestion 
was tacitly accepted, “paid me the compliment 
of confiding in me somewhat freely before he 
started on this hare-brained expedition of his.” 

“So it appears.” 

“Ah, but he didn’t only tell me what he 
was going to do ; he told me why he was 
doing it,” said I, as we sauntered on our way 
side by side. “It was difficult to believe,” I 
added, when I had waited long enough for 
the question upon which I had reckoned. 

“Indeed?” 

“He said he had proposed to you.” 

And again I waited, but never a word. 

“That child!” I added with deliberate scorn. 

But a further pause was broken only by 
my companion’s measured steps and my own 
awkward shuffle. 

“That baby!” I insisted. 

“Did you tell him he was one, Captain 
Clephane?” asked Mrs. Lascelles, dryly, but 
drawn so far at last. 

“I spared his feelings. But can it be true, 
Mrs. Lascelles?” 


146 


The Last Word 


"It is true/’ 

“Is it a fact that you didn’t give him a def- 
inite answer?” 

“I don’t know what business it is of yours,” 
said Mrs. Lascelles, bluntly; “and since he 
seems to have told you everything, neither do 
I know why you should ask me. However, 
it is quite true that I did not finally refuse 
him on the spot.” 

This carefully qualified confirmation should 
have afforded me abundant satisfaction. I 
was over-eager in the matter, however, and I 
cried out impetuously; 

“But you will?” 

“Will what?” 

“Refuse the boy!” 

We had reached the seat, but neither of us 
sat down. Mrs. Lascelles appeared to be sur- 
veying me with equal resentment and defiance. 
I, on the other hand, having shot my bolt, 
did my best to look conciliatory. 

“Why should I refuse him?” she asked at 
length, with less emotion and more dignity 
than her bearing had led me to expect. “You 
seem so sure about it, you know!” 

“He is such a boy — such an utter child — 
as I said just now.” I was conscious of the 
i47 


No Hero 


weakness of saying it again, and it alone, but 
my strongest arguments were too strong for 
direct statement. 

This one, however, was not unfruitful in the 
end. 

“And I,” said Mrs. Lascelles, “how old do 
you think I am? Thirty-five?” 

“Of course not,” I replied, with obvious 
gallantry. “But I doubt if Bob is even 
twenty.” 

“Well, then, you won’t believe me, but I 
was married before I was his age, and I am 
just six-and-twenty now.” 

It was a surprise to me. I did not doubt 
it for a moment; one never did doubt Mrs. 
Lascelles. It was indeed easy enough to be- 
lieve (so much I told her) if one looked upon 
the woman as she was, and only difficult in 
the prejudicial light of her matrimonial record. 
I did not add these things. “But you are a 
good deal older,” I could not help saying, 
“in the ways of the world, and it is there that 
Bob is such an absolute infant.” 

“But I thought an Eton boy was a man 
of the world?” said Mrs. Lascelles, quoting 
me against myself with the utmost readiness. 

148 


The Last Word 


“Ah, in some things,” I had to concede. 
“Only in some things, however.” 

“Well,” she rejoined, “of course I know 
what you mean by the other things. They 
matter to your mind much more than mere 
age, even if I had been fifteen years older, 
instead of five or six. It’s the old story, from 
the man’s point of view. You can live any- 
thing down, but you won’t let us. There is 
no fresh start for a woman; there never was 
and never will be.” 

I protested that this was unfair. “I never 
said that, or anything like it, Mrs. Lascelles !” 

“No, you don’t say it, but you think it!” 
she cried back. “It is the one thing you have 
in your mind. I was unhappy, I did wrong, 
so I can never be happy, I can never do right ! 
I am unfit to marry again, to marry a good 
man, even if he loves me, even if I love him!” 

“I neither say nor think anything of the 
kind,” I reiterated, and with some slight ef- 
fect this time. Mrs. Lascelles put no more 
absurdities into my mouth. 

“Then what do you say?” she demanded, 
her deep voice vibrant with scornful indigna- 
tion, though there were tears in it too. 

149 


No Hero 


“I think he will be a lucky fellow who gets 
you,” I said, and meant every word, as I 
looked at her well in the moonlight, with her 
shining eyes, and curling lip, and fighting 
flush. 

“Thank you, Captain Clephane!” 

And I thought I was to be honoured with a 
contemptuous courtesy; but I was not. 

“He ought to be a man, however,” I went 
on, “and not a boy, and still less the only 
child of a woman with whom you would never 
get on.” 

“So you are as sure of that,” exclaimed Mrs. 
Lascelles, “as of everything else!” It seemed, 
however, to soften her, or at least to change 
the current of her thoughts. “Yet you get 
on with her?” she added with a wistful in- 
tonation. 

I could not deny that I got on with Cath- 
erine Evers. 

“You are even fond of her?” 

“Quite fond.” 

“Then do you find me a very disagreeable 
person, that she and I couldn’t possibly hit 
it off, in your opinion?” 

“It isn’t that, Mrs. Lascelles,” said I, al- 
150 


The Last Word 


most wearily. “You must know what it is. 
You want to marry her son — ” 

Mrs. Lascelles smiled. 

“Well, let us suppose you do. That would 
be quite enough for Mrs. Evers. No matter 
who you were, how peerless, how incom- 
parable in every way, she would rather 
die than let you marry him at his age. I 
don’t say she’s wrong — I don’t say she’s right. 
I give you the plain fact for what it is worth : 
you would find her from the first a clever and 
determined adversary, a regular little lioness 
with her cub, and absolutely intolerant on that 
particular point.” 

I could see Catherine as I spoke, the Cath^ 
erine I had seen last, and liked least to re- 
member; but the vision faded before the 
moonlit reality of Mrs. Lascelles, laughing to 
herself like a great, naughty, pretty child. 

“I really think I must marry him,” she said, 
“and see what happens!” 

“If you do,” I answered, in all seriousness, 
“you will begin by separating mother and son, 
and end by making both their lives miserable, 
and bringing the last misery into your 
own.” 

151 


No Hero 


And either my tone impressed her, or the 
covert reminder in my last words ; for the bold 
smile faded from her face, and she looked 
longer and more searchingly in mine than she 
had done as yet. 

“You know Mrs. Evers exceedingly well, ,, 
Mrs. Lascelles remarked. 

“I did years ago,” I guardedly replied. 

“Do you mean to say,” urged my compan- 
ion, “that you have not seen her for years?” 

I did not altogether like her tone. Yet it 
was so downright and straightforward, it was 
hard to be the very reverse in answer to it, 
and I shied idiotically at the honest lie. I 
had quite lost sight both of Bob and his 
mother, I declared, from the day I went to 
India until now. 

“You mean until you came out here?” per- 
sisted Mrs. Lascelles. 

“Until the other day,” I said, relying on a 
carefully affirmative tone to close the subject. 
There was a pause. I began to hope I had 
succeeded. The flattering tale was never 
finished. 

“I believe,” said Mrs. Lascelles, “that you 
saw Mrs. Evers in town before you started.” 

152 


The Last Word 


It was too late to lie. 

“As a matter of fact/’ I answered easily, “I 
did.” 

I built no hopes on the pause which followed 
that. Somehow I had my face to the moon, 
and Mrs. Lascelles had her back. Yet I knew 
that her scrutiny of me was more critical than 
ever. 

“How funny of Bob never to have told me!” 
she said. 

“Told you what?” 

“That you saw his mother just before you 
left.” 

“I didn’t tell him,” I said at length. 

“That was funny of you, Captain Clephane.” 

“On the contrary,” I argued, with the im- 
pudence which was now my only chance, “it 
was only natural. Bob was rather raw with 
his friend Kennerley, you see. You knew 
about that?” 

“Oh, yes.” 

“And why they fell out?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, he might have thought the other fel- 
low had been telling tales, and that I had come 
out to have an eye on him, if he had known 
i53 


No Hero 

that I happened to see his mother just before 
I started.” 

There was another pause; but now I was 
committed to an attitude, and prepared for the 
worst. 

“Perhaps there would have been some truth 
in it?” suggested Mrs. Lascelles. 

“Perhaps,” I agreed, “a little.” 

The pause now was the longest of all. It 
had no terrors for me. Another cloud had 
come between us and the moon. I was sorry 
for that. I felt that I was missing something. 
Even the fine upstanding figure before me was 
no longer sharp enough to be expressive. 

“I have been harking back,” explained Mrs. 
Lascelles, eventually. “Now I begin to fol- 
low. You saw his mother, you heard a re- 
port, and you volunteered or at least con- 
sented to come out and keep an eye on the 
dear boy, as you say yourself. Am I not 
more or less right so far, Captain Cle- 
phane?” 

Her tone was frozen honey. 

“More or less,” I admitted ironically. 

“Of course, I don’t know what report that 
other miserable young man may have carried 
i54 


The Last Word 


home with him. I don’t want to know. But 
I can guess. One does not stay in hotel after 
hotel without getting a pretty shrewd idea of 
the way people talk about one. I know the 
sort of things they have been saying here. 
You would hear them yourself, no doubt, 
Captain Clephane, as soon as you arrived.” 

I admitted that I had, but reminded Mrs. 
Lascelles that the first person I had spoken 
to was also the greatest gossip in the hotel. 
She paid no attention to the remark, but stood 
looking at me again, with the look that I could 
never quite see to read. 

“And then,” she went on, “you found out 
who it was, and you remembered all about 
me, and your worst fears were confirmed. 
That must have been an interesting moment. 
I wonder how you felt. . . . Did it never 
occur to you to speak plainly to anybody?” 

“I wasn’t going to give you away,” I said, 
stolidly, though with no conscious parade of 
virtue. 

“Yet, you see, it would have made no dif- 
ference if you had! Did you seriously think 
it would make much difference, Captain 
Clephane, to a really chivalrous young man?” 
iS5 


No Hero 


I bowed my head to the well-earned taunt. 
“But,” she went on, “there was no need for 
you to speak to Mr. Evers. You might have 
spoken to me. Why did you not do that?” 

“Because I didn’t want to quarrel with 
you,” I answered quite honestly; “because I 
enjoyed your society too much myself.” 

“That was very nice of you,” said Mrs. Las- 
celles, with a sudden although subtle return 
of the good-nature which had always attracted 
me. “If it is sincere,” she added, as an appar- 
ent afterthought. 

“I am perfectly sincere now.” 

“Then what do you think I should do?” she 
asked me, in the soft new tone which actually 
flattered me with the idea that she was mak- 
ing up her mind to take my advice. 

“Refuse this lad!” 

“And then?” she almost whispered. 

“And then ” 

I hesitated. I found it hard to say what I 
thought, hard even upon myself. We had 
been good friends. I admired the woman cor- 
dially; her society was pleasant to me, as it 
always had been. Nevertheless, we had just 
engaged in a duel of no friendly character; 

156 


The Last Word 


and now that we seemed of a sudden to have 
become friends again, it was the harder to 
give her the only advice which I considered 
compatible alike with my duty and the varied 
demands of the situation. If she took it as 
she seemed disposed to do, the immediate loss 
would be mine, and I foresaw besides a much 
more disagreeable reckoning with Bob Evers 
than the one now approaching an amicable 
conclusion. I should have to stay behind to 
face the music of his wrath alone. Still, at 
the risk of appearing brutal I made my pro- 
posal in plain terms; but, to minimise that 
risk, I ventured to take the lady’s hand and 
was glad to find the familiarity permitted in 
the same friendly spirit in which it was in- 
dulged. 

“I would have no ‘and then,’ ” I said, “if 
I were you. I should refuse him under such 
circumstances that he couldn’t possibly bother 
you, or himself about you, again. Now is 
your opportunity.” 

“Is it ?” she asked, a thrilling timbre in her 
low voice. And I fancied there was a kin- 
dred tremor in the firm warm hand within 
mine. 


i57 


No Hero 


“The best of opportunities,” I replied, “if 
you are not too wedded to this place, and can 
tear yourself away from the rest of us.” (Her 
hand lay loose in mine.) “Mrs. Lascelles, I 
should go to-morrow morning” (her hand 
fell away altogether), “while he is still up the 
Matterhorn and I shouldn’t let him know 
where I — shouldn’t give him a chance of find- 
ing out ” 

A sudden peal of laughter cut me short. I 
could not have believed it came from my com- 
panion. But no other soul was near us, 
though I looked all ways. It was the merriest 
laughter imaginable, only the merriment was 
harsh and hard. 

“Oh, thank you, Captain Clephane! You 
are too delicious! I saw it coming; I only 
wondered whether I could contain myself until 
it came. Yet I could hardly believe that even 
you would commit yourself that finishing 
touch of impudence! Certainly it is an oppor- 
tunity, his being out of the way. You were 
not long in making use of it, were you? It 
will amuse him when he comes down, though 
it may open his eyes. I shall tell him every- 
thing, so I give you warning. Every single 
158 


The Last Word 

thing, that you have had the insolence to tell 
me!” 

She had caught up her skirts from the 
ground, she had half turned away from me, 
toward the hotel. The false merriment had 
died out of her. The true indignation re- 
mained, ringing in every accent of the deep 
sweet voice, and drawn up in every inch of 
the tall straight figure. I do not remember 
whether the moon was hid or shining at the 
moment. I only know that my lady’s eyes 
shone bright enough for me to see them then 
and ever after, bright and dry with a scorn 
that burnt too hot for tears; and that I ad- 
mired her even while she scorned me, as I 
had never thought to admire any woman but 
one, but this woman least of all. 

So we both stood, intent, some seconds, 
looking our last upon each other if I was 
wise. Then I lifted my hat, and offered my 
congratulations (more sincere than they 
sounded) to her and Bob. 

“Did I tell you why he is going up?” I 
added. “It is to pass the time until he knows 
his fate. If only we could let him know it 

1 59 


now!” 


No Hero 


Mrs. Lascelles glanced toward the moun- 
tain, and my eyes followed hers. A great 
cloud hid the grim outstanding summit. 

“If only you had prevented him from going!” 
she cried back at me in a last reproach; and 
to me her tone was conclusive, it rang so true, 
and so invidiously free from the smaller emo- 
tions which it had been my own unhappiness 
to inspire. It was the real woman who had 
spoken out once more, suddenly, perhaps un- 
thinkingly, but obviously from her heart. 
And as she turned, I followed her very slowly 
and without a word; for now was I surely 
and deservedly undone. 


60 


CHAPTER XI 

THE LION'S MOUTH 

It was a chilly morning, with rather a high 
wind; from the haze about the mountains of 
the Zermatt valley, which were all that I could 
see from my bedroom window, it occurred to 
me that I might look in vain for the Matter- 
horn from the other side of the hotel. It was 
still visible, however, when I came down, a 
white cloud wound about its middle like a 
cloth, and the hotel telescope already trained 
upon its summit from the shelter of the glass 
veranda. 

“See anybody?” I asked of a man who sat 
at the telescope as though his eye was frozen 
to the lens. He might have been witnessing 
the most exciting adventure, where the naked 
eye saw only rock and snow, and cold grey 
sky; but he rose at last with a shake of the 
head, a great gaunt man with kind keen eyes, 
and the skin peeled off his nose. 

“No,” said he, “I can’t see anybody, and 
161 


No Hero 


I’m very glad I can’t. It’s about as bad a 
morning for it as you could possibly have; 
yet last night was so fine that some fellows 
might have got up to the hut, and been foolish 
enough not to come down again. But have 
a look for yourself.” 

“Oh, thanks,” said I, considerably relieved 
at what I heard, “but if you can’t see anybody 
I’m sure I can’t. You have done it yourself, 
I daresay?” 

The gaunt man smiled demurely, and the 
keen eyes twinkled in his flayed face. He was, 
indeed, a palpable mountaineer. 

“What, the Matterhorn?” said he, lower- 
ing his voice and looking about him as if on 
the point of some discreditable admission. 
“Oh, yes, I’ve done the Matterhorn, back and 
front and both sides, with and without 
guides ; but everybody has, in these days. 
It’s nothing when you know the ropes and 
chains and things. They’ve got everything 
up there now except an iron staircase. Still, 
I should be sorry to tackle it to-day, even if 
they had a lift !” 

“Do you think guides would?” I asked, less 
reassured than I had felt at first. 

162 


The Lion’s Mouth 


“It depends on the guides. They are not 
the first to turn back, as a rule; but they like 
wind and mist even less than we do. The 
guides know what wind and mist mean.” 

I now understood the special disadvantages 
of the day and realised the obvious dangers. 
I could only hope that either Bob Evers or 
his guides had shown the one kind of courage 
required by the occasion, the moral courage 
of turning back. But I was not at all sure of 
Bob. His stimulus was not that of the single- 
minded, level-headed mountaineer; in his ro- 
mantic exaltation he was capable of hailing 
the very perils as so many more means of 
grace in the sight of Mrs. Lascelles ; yet with- 
out doubt he would have repudiated any such 
incentive, and that in all the sincerity of his 
simple heart. He did not know himself as I 
knew him. 

My fears were soon confirmed. Returning 
to the glass veranda, after the stock break- 
fast of the Swiss hotel, with its horseshoe 
rolls and fabricated honey, I found the tele- 
scope the centre of an ominous crowd, on 
whose fringe hovered my new friend the 
mountaineer. 

163 


No Hero 


“We were wrong,” he muttered to me. 
“Some fools are up there, after all.” 

“ How many?” I asked quickly. 

“I don’t know. There’s no getting near the 
telescope now, and won’t be till the clouds 
blot them out altogether.” 

I looked out at the Matterhorn. The loin- 
cloth of cloud had shaken itself out into a 
flowing robe, from which only the brown 
skull of the mountain protruded in its white 
skull-cap. 

“There are three of them,” announced a 
nasal voice from the heart of the little crowd. 
“A great long chap and two guides.” 

“He can’t possibly know that,” remarked 
the mountaineer to me, “but let’s hope it is 
so.” 

“They’re as plain as pike-staffs,” continued 
Quinby, whose bent blond head I now dis- 
tinguished, as he occupied the congenial post 
of Sister Anne. “They seem stuck ... No, 
they’re getting up on to the snow-slope, and 
the front man’s cutting steps.” 

“Then they’re all right for the present,” 
said the mountaineer. “It’s the getting down 
that’s ticklish.” 


164 


The Lion’s Mouth 


“You can see the rope blowing about be- 
tween them . . . what a wind there must 
be . . . it’s bent out taut like a bow, you 
can see it against the snow, and they’re bend- 
ing themselves more than forty-five degrees 
to meet it.” 

“All very well going up,” murmured the 
mountaineer: there was a sinister innuendo 
in the curt comments of the practical man. 

I turned into the hall. It, however, was 
quite deserted. I had hoped I might see 
something of Mrs. Lascelles ; she was not one 
of those in the glass veranda. I now looked 
in the drawing-room, but neither was she 
there. Returning to the empty hall, I passed 
a minute peering through the locked glass 
door of the pigeon-holes in which the careful 
concierge files the unclaimed letters. There 
was nothing for me that I could discern, in 
the C pigeon-hole ; but next door but one, 
under E, there lay on the very top a letter 
which caught my eye and more. It had not 
been through any post. It was a note direct- 
ed to R. Evers, Esq., in a hand that I knew 
instinctively to be that of Mrs. Lascelles, 
though I had never seen it in my life before. 

165 


No Hero 


It was a good hand, but large and bold and 
downright as herself. 

The concierge stood in the doorway, one 
eye on the disappearing Matterhorn, one on 
the experts and others in animated conclave 
round the still inaccessible telescope. I 
touched the concierge on the arm. 

“Did you see Mrs. Lascelles this morn- 
ing ?” 

The man’s eyes opened before his lips. 

“She has gone away, sir.” 

“I know,” I said, having indeed divined no 
less. “What train did she catch ?” 

“The first one from here. That also catches 
the early train from Zermatt.” 

“I am sorry,” I said after a pause. “I 
hoped to see Mrs. Lascelles before she went ; 
now I must write. She left you an address, 
I suppose?” 

“Oh, yes, sir.” 

“I shall ask you for it later on. No letters 
for me, I suppose?” 

“No, sir.” 

“Sure?” 

“I will look again.” 

And I looked with him, over his shoulder ; 

1 66 


The Lion’s Mouth 


but there was nothing; and the note for Bob 
Evers now inspired me with a tripartite blend 
of curiosity, envy, and apprehension. I would 
have had a last word from the same hand my- 
self; had it been never so scornful, this silent 
scorn was the harder sort to bear. Also I 
wanted much to know what her last word was 
to Bob — and dreaded more what it might be. 

There remained the unexpected triumph of 
having got rid of my lady after all. That is 
not to be belittled even now. It is a triumph 
to succeed in any undertaking, more espe- 
cially when one has abandoned one’s own last 
hope of such success. The unpleasant char- 
acter of this particular emprise made its 
eventual accomplishment in some ways the 
greater matter for congratulation in my eyes. 
At least I had done my part. I had come to 
hate it, but the thing was done, and it had 
been a fairly difficult thing to do. It was im- 
possible not to plume oneself a little on the 
whole, but the feeling was a superficial one, 
with deeper and uneasier feelings underneath. 
Still, I had practically redeemed my impulsive 
promise to Catherine Evers ; her son and this 
woman once parted, it should be easy to keep 
167 


No Hero 


them apart, and my knowledge of the woman 
forbade me to deny the fullest significance to 
her departure. She had gone away to stay 
away — from Bob. She had listened to me the 
less with her ears, because her reason and her 
heart had been compelled to heed. To be 
sure, she saw the unsuitability, the impossi- 
bility, as clearly as we did. But it was I who, 
at all events, had helped to make her see 
it; wherefore I deserved well of Catherine 
Evers, if of no other person in the world. 

Oddly enough, this last consideration af- 
forded me least satisfaction; it seemed to 
bring home to me by force of contrast the 
poor figure that I must assuredly cut in the 
eyes of the other two, the still poorer opinion 
that they would have of me if ever they knew 
all. I did not care to pursue this train of 
thought. It was a subject upon which I was 
not prepared to examine myself; to change 
it, I thought of Bob’s present peril, which I 
had almost forgotten as I lounged abstract- 
edly in the empty hall. If anything were to 
happen to him, in the vulgar sense ! What an 
irony, what poetic punishment for us surviv- 
ors ! And yet, even as I rehearsed the ghastly 
1 68 


The Lion’s Mouth 


climax in my mind, I told myself that the 
mother would rather see him even thus, than 
married to a widow who had also been di- 
vorced ; it was the younger woman who 
would never forgive me, or herself. 

Disappointed faces met me on my next vis- 
it to the veranda. The little crowd there had 
dwindled to a group. I could have had the 
telescope now for as long as I liked: the 
upper part of the Matterhorn was finally and 
utterly effaced and swallowed up by dense 
white mist and cloud. My friend the moun- 
taineer looked grave, but his disfigured face 
did not wear the baulked expression of others 
to which he drew my attention. 

“It is like the curtain coming down with 
the man’s head still in the lion’s mouth,” said 
he. 

“I hope,” said I devoutly, “that you don’t 
seriously think there’s any analogy?” 

The climber looked at me steadily, and 
then smiled. 

“Well, no, perhaps I don’t think it quite so 
bad as all that. But it’s no use pretending it 
isn’t dangerous. May I ask if you know who 
the foolhardy fellow is?” 

169 


No Hero 


I said I did not know, but mentioned my 
suspicion, only begging my climbing friend 
not to let the name go any farther. It was in 
too many mouths already, in quite another 
connection, I was going on to explain; but 
the mountaineer nodded, as much as to warn 
me that even he knew all about that. It was 
Bob’s office, however, to provide the hotel 
with its sensation while he remained, and 
he was not allowed to perform anonymously 
very long. His departure over night leaked 
out. I was asked if it was true. The flight of 
Mrs. Lascelles was the next discovery; des- 
perate deductions were drawn at once. She 
had jilted the unlucky youth and sent him in 
utter recklessness on his intentionally suicidal 
ascent. Nobody any longer expected to see 
him come down alive; so much I gathered 
from the fragments of conversation that 
reached my ears ; and never was better occu- 
pation for a bad day than appeared to be 
afforded by the discussion of the suppositi- 
tious tragedy in all its imaginary details. As, 
however, the talk invariably abated at my 
approach, giving place to uncomplimentary 
glances in my direction, I could not but infer 
170 


The Lion’s Mouth 


that public opinion had assigned me an un- 
enviable part in the piece. Perhaps I de- 
served it, though not from their point of 
view. 

The afternoon was at once a dreariness and 
a dread. There was no ray of sun without, 
no sort of warmth within. The Matterhorn 
never reappeared, but seemed the grimmer 
monster for this sinister invisibility. I gath- 
ered that there was real occasion for anxiety, 
if not for alarm, and I nursed mine chiefly in 
my own room until I heard the news when I 
went down for my letters. Bob Evers had 
walked in as though nothing had happened, 
and gone straight up to his room with a note 
that the concierge handed him. Some one 
had asked him whether it was he who had 
been up the Matterhorn in the morning, 
and young Evers had vouchsafed the barest 
affirmative compatible with civility. The sun- 
burnt climber was my informant. 

“And I don’t mind telling you it is a relief 
to me,” he added, “and to everybody, though 
I shouldn’t wonder if there was a little uncon- 
scious disappointment in the air as well. I 
congratulate you, for I could see you were 
171 


No Hero 


anxious, and I must find an opportunity of 
congratulating your young friend himself.” 

Meanwhile no such opportunity was afford- 
ed me, though I quite expected and was fully 
prepared for another visit from Bob in my 
room. I waited for him there until dinner- 
time, but he never came, and I was beginning 
to wish he would. It was like the wrapping of 
the Matterhorn in mist ; it only widened the 
field of apprehension ; and yet it was not for 
me to go to the boy. My unrest was further 
aggravated by a letter which I had just re- 
ceived from the boy’s mother in answer to my 
first to her. It was not a very dreadful letter ; 
but I only trusted that no evil impulse had 
caused Catherine to write in anything like the 
same strain to Bob ; for neither was it a very 
charitable letter, nor one that a man could be 
glad to get from the woman whom he had set 
out on an enduring pinnacle. There was 
only this to be said for it, that years ago I 
had sought in vain for a really human weak- 
ness in Catherine Evers, and now at last I 
had found one. She was rather too human 
about Mrs. Lascelles. 

I looked for Bob both at and after dinner, 
172 


The Lion’s Mouth 


but we were never within speaking distance 
and I fancied he avoided even my eye. What 
had Mrs. Lascelles said? He looked redder 
and browner and rougher in the face, but I 
heard that he would hardly open his lips at 
table, that he was almost surly on the subject 
of his exploit. Everybody else appeared to 
me to be speaking of it, or of Bob himself; 
but I had him on my nerves and may 
well have formed an exaggerated impression 
about it all. Only I do not forget some of 
the things I did overhear that day, and night ; 
and they now had the effect of sending me in 
search of Bob, since Bob would not come 
near me. “I will have it out with him,” I 
grimly decided, “and then get out of this my- 
self by the first train going.” I had had quite 
enough of the place that had enchanted me 
up to the last four-and-twenty hours. I be- 
gan to see myself back in Elm Park Gar- 
dens. There, at least, if also there alone, 
I should get some credit for what I had 
done. 

It was no use looking for Bob upon the ter- 
race now; yet I did look there, among other 
obvious places, before I could bring myself 
173 


No Hero 


to knock at his door. There was a light in 
his room, so I knew that he was there, and 
he cried out admittance in so sharp a tone 
that I fancied he also knew who knocked. I 
found him packing in his shirt-sleeves. He 
received me with a stare in exact keeping 
with his tone. What on earth had Mrs. 
Lascelles said? 

“Going away?” I asked, as a mere pre- 
liminary, and I shut the door behind me. Bob 
followed the action with raised eyebrows, 
then flung me the shortest possible affirma- 
tive, as he bent once more over the suit- 
case on the bed. 

But in a few seconds he looked up. 

“Anything I can do for you, Clephane?” 

“That depends where you are going.” 

Bob went on packing with a smile. I 
guessed where he was going. “I thought 
there might be something pressing,” he re- 
marked, without looking up again. 

“There is,” said I. “There is something 
you can do for me on the spot. You can try 
to believe that I have not meant to be quite 
such a skunk as I may have seemed — to you,” 
I was on the point of adding, but I stopped 
174 


The Lion’s Mouth 


short of that advisedly, as I thought of Mrs. 
Lascelles also. 

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Bob, in a would- 
be airy tone that carried its own contradic- 
tion. “All’s fair, according to the proverb ; 
I no more blame you than you would have 
blamed me. I hope, on the contrary, that I 
may congratulate you.” 

And he stood up with a look which, 
coupled with his words, made it my turn to 
stare. 

“Indeed you may not,” said I. 

“Aren’t you engaged to her?” he asked. 

“Good God, no!” I cried. “What made 
you think so?” 

“Everything!” exclaimed Bob, after a mo- 
ment’s pause of obvious bewilderment. “I — 
you see — I had a note from Mrs. Lascelles 
herself!” 

“Yes?” said I, carefully careless, but I 
wanted more than ever to know that missive’s 
gist. 

“Only a few lines,” Bob went on, ruefully ; 
“they are the first thing I heard or saw when 
I got down, and they almost made me wish 
I’d come down with a run ! Well, it’s no use 
i75 


No Hero 


talking about it, I only thought you’d know. 
It was the usual smack in the eye, I suppose, 
only nicely put and all that. She didn’t tell 
me where she was going, or why; she told 
me I had better ask you.” 

“But you wouldn’t condescend.” 

Bob gave a rather friendly little laugh. 

“I said I’d see you damned!” he admitted. 
“But of course I thought you were the lucky 
man. I still half believe you are !” 

“Well, I’m not.” 

“Do you mean to say that she’s refused 
you too?” 

“She hasn’t had the chance.” 

Bob’s eyes opened to an infantile width. 

“But you told me you were in earnest!” 
he urged. 

“As much in earnest as you were, I be- 
lieve was what I said.” 

“That’s the same thing,” returned Bob, 
sharply. “You may not think it is. I don’t 
care what you think. But I’m very sorry 
you said you were in earnest if you were 
not.” 

And his tone convinced me that he was no 
longer commiserating himself; he was sorry 
176 


The Lion’s Mouth 


on some new account, and the evident reality 
of his regret filled me in turn with all the 
qualms of a guilty conscience. 

“Why are you sorry ?” I demanded. 

“Oh, not on my own account,” said Bob. 
“I’m delighted, personally, of course.” 

“Then do you mean to say — you actually 
told her — I was as much in earnest as you 
were ?” 

Bob Evers smiled openly in my face ; it was 
the only revenge he ever took; and even it 
was tempered by the inextinguishable sweet- 
ness of expression and the childlike wide- 
eyed candour which were Bob’s even in the 
hour of his humiliation, and will be, one 
hopes, all his days. 

“Not in so many words,” he said, “but I 
am afraid I did tell her in effect. You see, 
I took you at your word. I thought it was 
quite true. I’m awfully sorry, Duncan. But 
it really does serve you right !” 

I made no answer. I was looking at the 
suit-case on the bed. Bob seemed to have 
lost all interest in his packing. I turned to 
leave him without a word. 

“I am awfully sorry!” he was the one to 
1 77 


No Hero 


say again. I began to wonder when he would 
see all round the point, and how it would 
affect his feeling (to say nothing of his 
actions) when he did. Meanwhile it was Bob 
who was holding out his hand. 

“So am I,” I said, taking it. 

And for once I, too, was not thinking 
about myself. 


178 


CHAPTER XII 


A STERN CHASE 

Where had Bob been going, and where was 
he going now? If these were not the first 
questions that I asked myself on coming 
away from him, they were at all events among 
my last thoughts that night, and as it hap- 
pened, quite my first next morning. His 
voice had reached me through my bedroom 
window, on the head of a dream about him- 
self. I got up and looked out ; there was Bob 
Evers seeing the suit-case into the tiny train 
which brings your baggage (and yourself, if 
you like) to the very door of the Riffel Alp 
Hotel. Bob did not like and I watched him 
out of sight down the winding path threaded 
by the shining rails. He walked slowly, 
head and shoulders bent, it might be with 
dogged resolve, it might be in mere depres- 
sion; there was never a glimpse of his face, 
nor a backward glance as he swung round 
179 


No Hero 

the final corner, with his great-coat over his 
arm. 

In spite of my curiosity as to his destina- 
tion, I made no attempt to discover it for 
myself, but on consideration I was guilty of 
certain inquiries concerning that of Mrs. 
Lascelles. They had not to be very exhaus- 
tive ; she had made no secret of her original 
plans upon leaving the Riffel Alp, and they 
did not appear to have undergone much 
change. I myself left the same forenoon, 
and lay that night amid the smells of Brigues, 
after a little tour of its hotels, in one of which 
I found the name of Mrs. Lascelles in the 
register, while in every one I was prepared to 
light upon Bob Evers in the flesh. But that 
encounter did not occur. 

In the early morning I was one of a shiv- 
ering handful who awaited the diligence for 
the Furka Pass; and an ominous drizzle 
made me thankful that my telegram of the 
previous day had been too late to secure me 
an outside seat. It was quite damp enough 
within. Nor did the day improve as we drove, 
or the view attract me in the least. It was 
at its worst as a sight, and I at mine as a 
180 


A Stern Chase 


sightseer. I have as little recollection of my 
fellow-passengers ; but I still see the page in 
the hotel register at the Rhone Glacier, with 
the name I sought written boldly in its place, 
just twenty-four hours earlier. 

The Furka Pass has its European reputa- 
tion ; it would gain nothing from my enthu- 
siastic praises, had I any enthusiasm to draw 
upon, or the descriptive powers to do it jus- 
tice. But what I best remember is the time 
it took us to climb those interminable zig- 
zags, and to shake off the too tenacious sight 
of the hotel in the hollow where I had seen a 
signature and eaten my lunch. Now I think 
of it, there were two couples who had come 
so far with us, but at the Rhone Glacier they 
exchanged their mutually demonstrative 
adieux, and I thought the couple who came 
on would never have done waving to the 
couple who stayed behind. They kept it up 
for at least an hour, and then broke out 
again at each of our many last glimpses of 
the hotel, now hundreds of feet below. That 
was the only diversion until these energetic 
people went to see the glacier cave at the 
summit of the pass. I am glad to remember 
181 


No Hero 


that I preferred refreshment at the inn. After 
that, night fell upon a scene whose desola- 
tion impressed me more than its grandeur, 
and so in the end we rattled into Andermatt : 
here was a huge hotel all but empty, with a 
perfect tome of a visitors’ book, and in it 
sure enough the fine free autograph which 
I was beginning to know so well. 

“Yes, sare,” said the concierge, “the season 
end suddenly mit the bad vedder at the be- 
ginning of the veek. You know that lady? 
She has been here last night ; she go avay 
again to-day, on to Goschenen and Zurich. 
Yes, sare, she shall be in Zurich to-night.” 

I was in Zurich myself the night after. I 
knew the hotel to go to, knew it from Mrs. 
Lascelles herself, whose experience of conti- 
nental hotels was so pathetically extensive. 
This was the best in Switzerland, so she had 
assured me in one of our talks: she could 
never pass through Zurich without making a 
night of it at the Baur au Lac. But one night 
of it appeared to be enough, or so it had 
proved on this occasion, for again I missed 
her by a few hours. I was annoyed. I agreed 
with Mrs. Lascelles about this hotel. Since I 
182 


A Stern Chase 


had made up my mind to overtake her first 
or last, it might as well have been a com- 
fortable place like this, where there was good 
cooking and good music and all the com- 
forts which I may or may not have need- 
ed, but which I was certainly beginning to 
desire. 

What a contrast to the place at which I 
found myself the following night. It was a 
place called Triberg, in the Black Forest, 
which I had never penetrated before, and cer- 
tainly never shall again. It seemed to me 
an uttermost end of the earth, but it was 
raining when I arrived, and the rain never 
ceased for an instant while I was there. 
About a dozen hotel omnibuses met the 
train, from which only three passengers 
alighted ; the other two were a young married 
couple at whom I would not have looked 
twice, though we all boarded the same lucky 
’bus, had not the young man stared very hard 
at me. 

“Captain Clephane,” said he, “I guess 
you’ve forgotten me ; but you may remember 
my best gurl?” 

It was our good-natured young American 
183 


No Hero 


from the Riffel Alp, who had not only joined 
in the daily laugh against himself up there, 
but must needs raise it as soon as ever he 
met one of us again. I rather think his 
best girl did not hear him, for she was 
staring through the streaming omnibus win- 
dows into an absolutely deserted country 
street, and I feared that her eyes would soon 
resemble the panes. She brightened, how- 
ever, in a very flattering way, as I thought, 
on finding a third soul for one or both of 
them to speak to, for a change. I only 
wished I could have returned the compliment 
in my heart. 

“Captain Clephane,” continued the young 
bridegroom, “we came down Monday last. 
Say, who do you guess came down along 
with us?” 

“A friend of yours,” prompted the bride, 
as I put on as blank an expression as possible. 

I opened my eyes a little wider. It seemed 
the only thing to do. 

“Captain Clephane,” said the bridegroom, 
beaming all over his good-humoured face, 
“it was a lady named Lascelles, and it’s to 
her advice we owe this pleasure. We trav- 
184 


A Stern Chase 


elled together as far as Loocerne. We guess 
we’ll put salt on her at this hotel.” 

“So does the Captain,” announced the 
bride, who could not look at me without 
a smile, which I altogether declined to return. 
But I need hardly confess that she was right. 
It was from Mrs. Lascelles that I also had 
heard of the dismal spot to which we were 
come, as her own ultimate objective after 
Switzerland. It was the only address with 
which she had provided the concierge at the 
Riffel Alp. All day I had regretted the night 
wasted at Zurich, on the chance of saving a 
day; but until this moment I had been san- 
guine of bringing my dubious quest to a suc- 
cessful issue here in Triberg. Now I was no 
longer even anxious to do so. I did not de- 
sire witnesses of a meeting which might well 
be of a character humiliating to myself. Still 
less should I have chosen for such witnesses 
a couple who were plainly disposed to put the 
usual misconstruction upon the relations of 
any man with any woman. 

My disappointment was consequently less 
than theirs when we drove up to as gloomy 
a hostelry as I have ever beheld, with the 
185 


No Hero 


blue-black forest smoking wet behind it, to 
find that here also the foul weather had 
brought the season to a premature and sud- 
den end, literally emptying this particular 
hotel. Nor did the landlord give us the wel- 
come we might have expected on a hasty con- 
sideration of the circumstances. He said that 
he had been on the point of shutting up 
that house until next season and hinted 
at less profit than loss upon three persons 
only. 

“But there’s a fourth person coming,” de- 
clared the disconsolate bride. “We figured 
on finding her right here !” 

“A Mrs. Lascelles,” her husband explained. 

“Been and gone,” said the landlord, grin- 
ning sardonically. “Too lonely for the lady. 
She has arrived last night, and gone away 
again this morning. You will find her at the 
Darmstsedterhof, in Baden-Baden, unless she 
changes her mind on the way.” 

I caught his grin. It had been the same 
story, at every stage of my journey; the 
chances were that it would be the same thing 
again at Baden-Baden. There may have 
been something, however, of which I was un- 
186 


A Stem Chase 


aware in my smile ; for I found myself under 
close observation by the bride; and as our 
eyes met her hand slipped within her hus- 
band’s arm. 

“I guess we won’t find her there,” she said. 
“I guess we’ll just light out for ourselves, and 
wish the captain luck.” 

A stern chase is proverbially protracted, 
but on dry land it has usually one end. Mine 
ended in Baden on the fifth (and first fine) 
day, rather early in the afternoon. On ar- 
rival I drove straight to the Darmstsedterhof, 
and asked to see no visitors’ books, for the 
five days had taken the edge off my finesse, 
but inquired at once whether a Mrs. Lascelles 
was staying there or not. She was. It 
seemed incredible. Were they sure she had 
not just left ? They were sure. But she was 
not in ; at my request they made equally sure 
of that. She had probably gone to the Con- 
versationshaus, to listen to the band. All 
Baden went there in the afternoon, to listen 
to that band. It was a very good band. 
Baden-Baden was a very good place. There 
was no better hotel in Baden-Baden than the 
Darmstsedterhof ; there were no such baths in 
187 


No Hero 


the other hotels, these came straight from the 
spring, at their natural temperature. They 
were matchless for rheumatism, especially in 
the legs. The old Empress, Augusta, when 
in Baden, used to patronise this very hotel 
and no other. They could show me the actual 
bath, and I myself could have pension (baths 
excluded) for eight marks and fifty a day. If 
I would be so kind as to step into the lift, I 
should see the room for myself, and then 
with my permission they would bring in my 
luggage and pay the cab. 

All this by degrees, from a pale youth in 
frock-coat and forage-cap, and a more pros- 
perous personage with pince-nez and a paunch 
(yet another concierge and my latest landlord 
respectively), while I stood making up my 
mind. The closing proposition was of some 
assistance to me. I had no luggage on the 
cab, of which the cabman’s hat alone was vis- 
ible, at the bottom of a flight of steps, at the 
far end of the flagged approach. I had left 
my luggage at the station, but I only recol- 
lected the fact upon being recalled from a 
mental forecast of the interview before me to 
these exceedingly petty preliminaries. 

1 88 


A Stern Chase 


There and then I paid off the cab and found 
my own way to this Conversationshaus. I 
liked the look of the trim, fresh town in its 
perfect amphitheatre of pine-clad hills, cov- 
ered in by a rich blue sky from which the last 
clouds were exhaling like breath from a mir- 
ror. The well-drained streets were drying 
clean as in a black frost ; checkered with sharp 
shadows, twinkling with shop windows, and 
strikingly free from the more cumbrous 
forms of traffic. If this was Germany, I could 
dispense with certain discreditable prejudices. 
I had to inquire my way of a policeman in a 
flaming helm; because I could not under- 
stand his copious directions, he led me to a 
tiny bridge within earshot of the band, and 
there refused my proferred coin with the dig- 
nity of a Hohenzollern. Under the tiny 
bridge there ran the shallowest and clearest 
of little rivers. Up the white walls of the 
houses clambered a deal of Virginia creeper, 
brought on by the rain, and now almost scar- 
let in the strong sunlight. Presently at some 
gates there was a mark to pay, or it may have 
been two ; immediate admittance to an 
avenue of fascinating shops, with an inner 
189 


No Hero 


avenue of trees, little tables under them, and 
the crash of the band growing louder at every 
yard. Eventual access to a fine, broad terrace, 
a fine, long fagade, a bandstand, and people 
listening and walking up and down, people 
listening and drinking beer or coffee at more 
little tables, people listening and reading on 
rows of chairs, people standing to listen with 
all their ears ; but not for a long time the per- 
son I sought. 

Not for a very long time, but yet, at last, 
and all alone, among the readers on the 
chairs, deep in a Tauchnitz volume even here 
as in the Alps ; more daintily yet not less 
simply dressed, in pink muslin and a big 
black hat ; and blessed here as there with 
such blooming health, such inimitable fresh- 
ness, such a general air of well-being and of 
deep content, as almost to disgust me after 
my whole week’s search and my own hourly 
qualms. 

So I found Mrs. Lascelles in the end, and 
so I saw her until she looked up and saw me ; 
then the picture changed ; but I am not going 
to describe the change. 

190 


A Stern Chase 


“Well, really!’’ she cried out. 

“It has taken me all the week to find you,” 
said I, as I replaced my hat. 

Her eyes flashed again. 

“Has it, indeed ! And now you have found 
me, aren’t you satisfied? Pray have a good 
look, Captain Clephane. You won’t find any- 
body else!” 

Her meaning dawned on me at last. 

“I didn’t expect to, Mrs. Lascelles.” 

“Am I to believe that?” 

“You must do as you please. It is the 
truth. Mrs. Lascelles, I have been all the 
week looking for you and you alone.” 

I spoke with some warmth, for not only 
did I speak the truth, but it had become 
more and more the truth at every stage of my 
journey since Brigues. Mrs. Lascelles leant 
back in her chair and surveyed me with less 
anger, but with the purer and more per- 
nicious scorn. 

“And what business had you to do that?” 
she asked calmly. “How dare you, I should 
like to know?” 

“I dared,” said I, “because I owed you a 
debt which, I felt, must be paid in person, or 

191 


No Hero 


it would never be paid at all. Mrs. Lascelles, 
I owed and do owe you about the most abject 
apology man ever made ! I have followed 
you all this way for no other earthly reason 
than to make it, in all sincere humility. But 
it has taken me more or less since Tuesday 
morning; and I can’t kneel here. Do you 
mind if I sit down?” 

Mrs. Lascelles drew in the hem of her pink 
muslin, with an all but insufferable gesture 
of unwilling resignation. I took the next 
chair but one, but, leaning my elbow on the 
chair-back between us, was rather the gainer 
by the intervening inches, which enabled me 
to study a perfect profile and the most won- 
derful colouring as I could scarcely have 
done at still closer range. She never turned 
to look at me, but simply listened while the 
band played, and people passed, and I said 
my say. It was very short : there was so little 
that she did not know. There was the ex- 
citement about Bob, his subsequent reappear- 
ance, our scene in his room and my last sight 
of him in the morning; but the bare facts 
went into few words, and there was no de- 
mand for details. Mrs. Lascelles seemed to 
192 


A Stern Chase 


have lost all interest in her latest lover; but 
when I tried to speak of my own hateful hand 
in that affair, to explain what I could of it, 
but to extenuate nothing, and to apologise 
from my heart for it all, then there was a 
change in her, then her blood mounted, then 
her bosom heaved, and I was silenced by a 
single flash from her eyes. 

“Yes,” said she, “you could let him think 
you were in earnest, you could pose as his 
rival, you could pretend all that ! Not to me, 
I grant you ! Even you did not go quite so 
far as that ; or was it that you knew that I 
should see through you? You made up for 
it, however, the other night. That I never, 
never, never shall forgive. I, who had never 
seriously thought of accepting him, who was 
only hesitating in order to refuse him in the 
most deliberate and final manner imaginable 
— I, to have the word put into my mouth — 
by you ! I, who was going in any case, of 
my own accord, to be told to go — by you! 
One thing you will never know, Captain Cle- 
phane, and that is how nearly you drove me 
into marrying him just to spite you and his 
miserable mother. I meant to do it, that 


i93 


No Hero 


night when I left you. It would have served 
you right if I had!” 

She did not rise. She did not look at me 
again. But I saw the tears standing in her 
eyes, one I saw roll down her cheek, and the 
sight smote me harder than her hardest word, 
though more words followed in broken whis- 
pers. 

“It wasn’t because I cared . . . that you 
hurt me as you did. I never did care for him 
. . . like that. It was . . . because . . . you 
seemed to think my society contamination 
. . . to an honest boy. I did care for him, 
but not like that. I cared too much for him 
to let him marry me ... to contaminate him 
for life !” 

I repudiated the reiterated word with all 
my might. I had never used it, even in my 
thoughts; it had never once occurred to me 
in connection with her. Had I not shown as 
much? Had I behaved as though I feared 
contamination for myself? I rapped out these 
questions with undue triumph, in my heat, 
only to perceive their second edge as it cut 
me to the quick. 

“But you were playing a part,” retorted 
194 


A Stern Chase 


Mrs. Lascelles. “You don’t deny it. Are 
you proud of it, that you rub it in? Or are 
you going to begin denying it now?” 

Unfortunately, that was impossible. It was 
too late for denials. But, driven into my last 
corner, as it seemed, I relapsed for the mo- 
ment into thought, and my thoughts took 
the form of a rapid retrospect of all the hours 
that this angry woman and I had spent to- 
gether. I was introduced to her again by 
poor Bob. I recognised her again by the light 
of a match, and accosted her next morning 
in the strong sunshine. We went for our 
first walk together. We sat together on the 
green ledge overlooking the glaciers, and 
first she talked about herself, and then we 
both talked about Bob, and then Bob ap- 
peared in the flesh and gave me my disastrous 
idea. Then there was the day on the Fin- 
delen that we had all three spent together. 
Then there was the walk home from early 
church (short as it had been), the subsequent 
expedition to Zermatt and back, with its 
bright beginning and its clouded end. Up to 
that point, at all events, they had been happy 
hours, so many of them unburdened by a 
i95 


No Hero 


single thought of Bob Evers and his folly, 
not one of them haunted by the usual sense 
of a part that is played. I almost wondered 
as I realised this. I supposed it would be no 
use attempting to express myself to Mrs. 
Lascelles, but I felt I must say something 
before I went, so I said : 

“I deny nothing, and Em proud of nothing, 
but neither am I quite so ashamed as perhaps 
I ought to be. Shall I tell you why, Mrs. 
Lascelles? It may have been an insolent and 
an infamous part, as you imply; but I en- 
joyed playing it, and I used often to forget 
it was a part at all. So much so that even 
now Em not so sure that it was one ! There 
— I suppose that makes it all ten times 
worse. But I won’t apologise again. Do you 
mind giving me that stick?” 

I had rested the two of them against the 
chair between us. Mrs. Lascelles had taken 
possession of one, with which she was me- 
thodically probing the path, for there had been 
no time to draw their Alpine teeth. She did 
not comply with my request. She smiled 
instead. 

“I mind very much,” her old voice said. 

196 


A Stern Chase 


“Now we have finished fighting, perhaps you 
will listen to the Meistersinger — for it is 
worth listening to on that band — and try to 
appreciate Baden while you are here. There 
are no more trains for hours.” 

The wooded hills rose over the bandstand, 
against the bright blue sky. The shadow of 
the colonnade lay sharp and black beyond our 
feet, with people passing, and the band crash- 
ing, in the sunlight beyond. That was Baden. 
I should not have found it a difficult place to 
appreciate, a week or so before ; even now it 
was no hardship to sit there listening to the 
one bit of Wagner that my ear welcomes as 
a friend, and furtively to watch my compan- 
ion as she sat and listened too. You will 
perceive by what train of associations my eyes 
soon fell upon the Tauchnitz volume which she 
must have placed without thinking on the 
chair between us. I took it up. Heavens! 
It was one of the volumes of Browning’s 
Poems. And back I sped in spirit to a green 
ledge overlooking the Gorner Glacier, to 
think what we had said about Browning up 
there, but only to remember how I had 
longed to be to Mrs. Lascelles what Cath- 
i97 


No Hero 


erine Evers had been to me. There were 
some sharp edges to the reminiscence, but I 
turned the pages while they did their worst, 
and so cut myself to the heart upon a sharper 
than them all. It was in a poem I remem- 
bered, a poem whose title pained me into 
glancing farther. And see what leapt to 
meet me from the printed page: 

“And I, — what I seem to my friend, you see : 

What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess : 

What I seem to myself, do you ask of me ? 

No hero, I confess.” 

True, too true; no hero, indeed; anything 
in the wide world else ! But that I should 
read it there by the woman’s side ! And yet, 
even that was no such coincidence; had we 
not talked about the poet, had I not implied 
what Catherine thought of him, what every- 
body ought to think? 

Of a sudden a strange thrill stirred me; 
sidelong I glanced at my companion. She 
had turned her head away; her cheek was 
deeply dyed. She knew what I was doing; 
she might divine my thoughts. I shut the 
book lest she should see the vile title of a 
thing I had hitherto liked. And the Prize- 
lied crashed back into the ear. 

198 


CHAPTER XIII 


NUMBER THREE 

It was the middle of November when I was 
shown once more into the old room at the 
old number in Elm Park Gardens. There 
was a fire, the windows were shut, and the 
electric light was a distinct improvement when 
the maid put it on; otherwise all was ex- 
actly as I had left it in August, and so 
often pictured it since. There was “Hope,” 
presiding over the shelf of poets, and here 
“Paolo and Francesca,” reminiscent as ever 
of Melbury Road, upon a wet Sunday, 
years and years ago. The day’s Times and 
the week’s Spectator were not less prominent 
than the last new problem novel; all three 
lay precisely where their predecessors had 
always lain; and my own dead self stood in 
its own old place upon the piano which had 
been in St. Helena with Napoleon. It is 
vanity’s deserts to come across these unnec- 
essary memorials of a decently buried boy- 
199 


No Hero 


hood ; there is always something stultifying 
about them, and I longed to confiscate this 
one of me. 

But there was a photograph on the chim- 
ney-piece that interested me keenly; it was 
evidently the very latest of Bob Evers, and I 
studied it with a painful curiosity. Was the 
boy really altered, or did I only imagine it 
from my secret knowledge of his affairs ? To 
me he seemed graver, more sedate, less an- 
gelically trustful in expression, and yet some- 
thing finer and manlier withal : to confirm the 
idea one had only to compare this new one 
with the racket photograph now relegated 
to a rear rank. The round-eyed look was 
gone. Had I here yet another memorial of 
yet another buried boyhood? If so, I felt I 
was the sexton, and I might be ashamed, and 
I was. 

“Looking at Bob? Isn’t it a dear one of 
him? You see — he is none the worse!” 

And Catherine Evers stood smiling as 
warmly, as gratefully, as she grasped my 
hand; but with her warmth there was a cer- 
tain nervousness of manner, which had the 
odd effect of putting me perversely at my 


200 


Number Three 


ease ; and I found myself looking critically at 
Catherine, really critically, for I suppose the 
first time in my life. 

“He is playing foot-ball,” she continued, 
full as ever of her boy. “I had a letter from 
him only this morning. He had his colours 
at Eton, you know (he had them for every- 
thing there), but he never dreamt of getting 
them at Cambridge, yet now he really thinks 
he has a chance! They tried him the other 
day, and he kicked a goal. Dear old Bob! 
If he does get them he will be a Blue and a 
half, he says. He writes so happily, Duncan ! 
I have so much to be thankful for — to thank 
you for!” 

Yes, Catherine was good to look at; there 
was no doubt of it ; and this time she was not 
wearing any hat. Discoursing of the lad, she 
was animated, eager, for once as exclama- 
tory as her pen, with light and life in every 
look of the thin intellectual face, in every 
glance of the large, intellectual eyes, and 
in every intonation of the keen dry voice. 
A sweet woman ; a young woman ; a woman 
with a full heart of love and sympathy 
and tenderness — for Bob! Yet, when she 


201 


No Hero 


thanked me at the end, either upon an im- 
pulse, or because she thought she must, her 
eyes fell, and again I detected that slight em- 
barrassment which was none the less a reve- 
lation, to me, in Catherine Evers, of all 
women in the world. 

“We won’t speak of that/’ I said, “if you 
don’t mind. I am not proud of it.” 

Catherine scanned me more narrowly. I 
knew her better with that look. “Then tell 
me about yourself, and do sit down,” she said, 
drawing a chair near the fire, but sitting on 
the other side of it herself. “I needn’t ask 
you how you are. I never saw you looking 
so well. That comes of going right away and 
not hurrying back. I think you were so wise ! 
But, Duncan, I am sorry to see both sticks 
still ! Have you seen your man since you 
came back?” 

“I have.” 

“Well?” 

“I’m afraid there’s no more soldiering for 

„ >> 
me. 

Catherine seemed more than sorry and dis- 
appointed; she looked quite indignant with 
the eminent specialist who had finally pro- 
202 


Number Three 


nounced this opinion. Was I sure he was the 
very best man for that kind of thing? She 
would have a second opinion, if she were me. 
Very well, then, a third and fourth ! If there 
was one man she pitied from the bottom of 
her heart, it was the man without a profes- 
sion or an occupation of some kind. Cathe- 
rine looked, however, as though her pity were 
almost akin to horror. 

“I have a trifle, luckily,” I said. “I must 
try something else.” 

Catherine stared into the fire, as though 
thinking of something else for me to try. She 
seemed full of apprehension on my account. 

“Don’t you worry about me,” I went on. 
“I came here to talk about somebody else, of 
course.” 

Catherine almost started. 

“I’ve told you about Bob,” she said, with 
a suspicious upward glance from the fire. 

“I don’t mean Bob,” said I, “or anything 
you may think I did for him or you. I said 
just now that I didn’t want to speak of it and 
no more I do. Yet, as a matter of fact, I do 
want to speak to you about the lady in that 
case.” 


203 


No Hero 


Catherine’s face betrayed the mixed emo- 
tions of relief and fresh alarm. 

“You don’t mean to say the creature — ? 
But it’s impossible. I heard from Bob only 
this morning. He wrote so happily!” 

I could not help smiling at the nature and 
quality of the alarm. 

“They have seen nothing more of each 
other, if that’s what you fear,” said I. “But 
what I do want to speak about is this creat- 
ure, as you call her, and no one else. She has 
done nothing to deserve quite so much con- 
tempt. I want you to be just to her, Cathe- 
rine.” 

I was serious. I may have been ridiculous. 
Catherine evidently found me so, for, after 
gauging me with that wry but humourous 
look which I knew so well of old, for which 
I had been waiting this afternoon, she went 
off into the decorous little fit of laughter in 
which it had invariably ended. 

“Forgive me, Duncan dear! But you do 
look so Serious, and you are so dreadfully 
broad! I never was. I hope you remember 
that? Broad minds and easy principles — the 
combination is inevitable. But, really though, 
204 


Number Three 


Duncan, is there anything to be said for her ? 
Was she a possible person, in any sense of the 
word?” 

“Quite a probable person,” I assured 
Catherine. 

“But I have heard all sorts of things about 
her !” 

“From Bob?” 

“No, he never mentioned her.” 

“Nor me, perhaps ?” 

“Nor you, Duncan. I am afraid there 
may be just a drop of bad blood there! You 
see, he looked upon you as a successful rival. 
You wrote and told me so, if you remember, 
from some place on your way down from the 
mountains. Your letter and Bob arrived the 
same night.” 

I nodded. 

“It was so clever of you !” pursued Cathe- 
rine. “Quite brilliant ; but I don’t quite know 
what to say to your letting my baby climb 
that awful Matterhorn ; in a fog, too !” 

And there was real though momentary re- 
proach in the firelit face. 

“I couldn’t very well stop him, you know. 
Besides,” I added, “it was such a chance.” 

205 


No Hero 


“Of what?” 

“Of getting rid of Mrs. Lascelles. I 
thought you would think it worth the risk.” 

“I do,” declared Catherine, on due consul- 
tation with the fire. “I really do ! Bob is all 
I have — all I want — in this world, Duncan; 
and it may seem a dreadful thing to say, and 
you mayn’t believe it when I’ve said it, but — 
yes ! — I’d rather he had never come home at 
all than come home married, at his age, and 
to an Indian widow, whose first husband had 
divorced her ! I mean it, Duncan ; I do in- 
deed!” 

“I am sure you do,” said I. “It was just 
what I said to myself.” 

“To think of my Bob being Number 
Three !” murmured Catherine, with that 
plaintive drollery of hers which I had found 
irresistible in the days of old. 

I was able to resist it now. “So those were 
the things you heard?” I remarked. 

“Yes,” said Catherine; “haven’t you heard 
them ?” 

“I didn’t need. I knew her in India years 
ago.” 

Catherine’s eyes opened. 

206 


Number Three 


“ You knew this Mrs. Lascelles?” 

“Before that was her name. I have also 
met her original husband. If you had known 
him, you would be less hard on her.” 

Catherine’s eyes were still wide open. 
They were rather hard eyes, after all. “Why 
did you not tell me you had known her, when 
you wrote?” she asked. 

“It wouldn’t have done any good. I did 
what you wanted done, you know. I thought 
that was enough.” 

“It was enough,” echoed Catherine, with a 
quick return of grace. She looked into the 
fire. “I don’t want to be hard upon the poor 
thing, Duncan ! I know you think we women 
always are, upon each other. But to have 
come back married — at his age — to even the 
nicest woman in the world ! It would have 
been madness . . . ruination . . . Duncan, I’m 
going to say something else that may shock 
you.” 

“Say away,” said I. 

Her voice had fallen. She was looking at 
me very narrowly, as if to measure the effect 
of her unspoken words. 

“I am not so very sure about marriage,” 
20 7 


No Hero 


she went on, “at any age ! Don’t misun- 
derstand me ... I was very happy . . . 
but I for one could never marry again . . . 
and I am not sure that I ever want to see 
Bob . . .” 

Catherine had spoken very gently, looking 
once more in the fire; when she ceased there 
was a space of utter silence in the little room. 
Then her eyes came back furtively to mine; 
and presently they were twinkling with their 
old staid merriment. 

“But to be Number Three !” she said again. 
“My poor old Bob !” 

And she smiled upon me, tenderly, from 
the depths of her alter-egoism. 

“Well,” I said, “he never will be.” 

“God forbid !” cried Catherine. 

“He has forbidden. It will never happen.” 

“Is she dead?” asked Catherine, but not too 
quickly for common decency. She was not 
one to pass such bounds. 

“Not that I know of.” 

It was hard to repress a sneer. 

“Then what makes you so sure — that he 
never could?” 

“Well, he never will in my time !” 

208 


Number Three 


“You are good to me,” said Catherine, 
gratefully. 

“Not a bit good,” said I, “or — only to my- 
self ... I have been good to no one else in 
this whole matter. That’s what it all amounts 
to, and that’s what I really came to tell you. 
Catherine ... I am married to her my- 
self!” 


THE END 





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THE SHADOW OF A MAN 

“ Mr. Hornung is one of the foremost writers, and 
Australia is, as she should be, proud of him. There is a 
freshness and vigor in his writings which belongs to few 
men. He is master of his subjects. His characters are 
men of flesh. There are no subtle soul studies in his 
books.” — San Francisco Bulletin. 

$1.25 


THE ROGUE’S MARCH 

“ Mr. Hornung has succeeded admirably in his object : 
his Australian scenes are a veritable nightmare ; they 
sear the imagination, and it will be some time before we 
get Hookey Simpson, the clank of the chains, and the 
hero’s degradation off our mind.” 

— London Saturday Review. 

$1.50 



THE NOVELS OF E. W. HORNUNG 


MY LORD DUKE 

“ It is pleasant to turn to a real story by a real story- 
writer. Such is 4 My Lord Duke.’ ... Its story is 
its own, both in plot and in characterization. It is a 
capital little novel.” — The Nation. 

$1.25 


YOUNG BLOOD 

“Whether Lowndes be entirely realized or not does 
not much matter ; the conception of him is already a dis- 
tinction. He is an adventurer of genius, but not built 
on the usual lines.” — The Bookman. 

$1.25 


SOME PERSONS UNKNOWN 

“ The dramatic and tragic aspects of Australian life 
are treated by Mr. Hornung with that happy union of 
vigor and sympathy which has stood him in such good 
stead in his earlier novels.” — London Spectator. 

$1.25 


In the Ivory Series. Each i6mo, 73 cents 

THE BOSS OF TAROOMBA 

“ Remind us by their vividness and fantastic quality 
of Stevenson in some of his South Sea Island tales. 
. . . The hero is an uncommon creation even for 

fiction.” — Chicago Times-Herald. 

A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH 

“ Mr. E. W. Hornung is one of the most successful 
delineators of Bush life.” — Chicago Tribune . 

IRRALIE’S BUSHRANGER 

“ A capital little story of Australian love and advent- 
ure. There is no flagging in the press and stir of the 
story.” — The Nation. 


Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York 






















APR 9 1903 











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